Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Montreal Police Squad of Tears
Sergeant Heads ‘Squad of Tears' Montreal Standard 24 April 1948
by David Willock
Detective Sergeant Onesime Lemieux is the only man in Montreal with a larger collection of snapshots than Mayor Camilien Houde. In 15 years in charge of the north-end division of the Missing Persons Bureau he has handled more than 3,000 cases and his collection consists of their dossiers each complete with photograph.
His experiences with every form of human misery have made a moralist of Lemieux. Every other sentence he utters is some familiar phrase such as “the sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children.” The difference between Lemieux and most other moralists is that he can quote chapter and verse to prove them.
“You can call us ‘the squad of tears,’” he told me. “There is no state of mental depression, degeneracy or wickedness of which human beings are capable that I have not come across.”
Lemieux, an earnest, bespectacled man of 54, finds that the proportion of men to women reported missing is much higher. He attributes this to the fact that women when faced with adversity have more will-power and moral strength than men.
“During the depression years,” he says, “we pulled 25 fathers out of the river, but never a mother. Also, casualties amongst insurance agents were high during that period. Of 10 reported missing we found seven drowned.”
Lemieux who takes only an occasional drink and does not smoke blames liquor for many a person’s downfall. “People do terrible things when they drink,” he says. “One man in a good job came home one day when his wife was out, sold their furniture valued at $2,500 for $600 and vanished leaving his wife and children destitute. In such cases the family has to be looked after by Montreal social services. The annual budget is $4,500,000. It needs to be nearly $7,000,000. All we can do is trace the man and notify the wife of his whereabouts. Then the Attorney-General can issue a warrant for his arrest for non-support.
“Unfortunately we are living in a modern world with a criminal code which has long white whiskers. It should be impossible for a husband to do such a thing to his family and sometimes get away with it.” He threw some photographs in front of me and made a rapid calculation. “There you have nine married men who disappeared from home. As a result their wives and 27 children were left destitute. Is that right?”
There is often injustice too, on the distaff side as in the case of the man who returned from service overseas to find that his wife had disappeared. Eventually she was traced to Texas where she was living with another man. One day the other man tired of her and she came home. Soon after she telephoned Lemieux in great indignation. “Why did you tell my husband that you had a wife like me you’d break her neck?” She asked. “He nearly did.”
On the subject of home-breakers, male and female, Lemieux waxes particularly strong, maintaining there should be a law by which a man and woman who deliberately entices away another’s husband or wife can be prosecuted. He cites many case of middle-aged men who fall for young girls and vanish, leaving families and positions behind, but he says, nevertheless that men are the worst offenders as home-breakers.
Young girls who fall into bad company, get into he family way and vanish provide Lemieux with many of his case. “Look at them,” he says producing photographs. “The pride of a nation. Grade A citizens who become Grade Z in no time. Lack of parental control or bickering between husband and wife is often the reason for their going off the deep end.”
“There was once a Montreal man, “ relates Lemieux, “who was always drunk and when reproached by his wife would always say that he was going to jump in the canal. One day his mother-in-law said, ‘Oh you’ve been saying this for 20 years. Why don’t you keep your word.’ The next morning he started drinking again, brooded on what had been said then went to No. 4 basin. Taking off his jacket he dived in. Workmen fished him out but by that time he had drowned. His wife was notified and immediately burs into tears. ‘Stop crying,’ said her mother. ‘You have been crying for 20 years. This is the end of your troubles.'"
’”Girls who marry too young and have children also provide Lemieux with work. “They quickly become discontented,” he says, “and when temptation comes along they grab at it. After all, a girl of 23 is still a child, although,” he says, ruminatively, “there seems to be no age limit to childishness.”
Lemieux’s job does not take him outside of Montreal. If a missing person is believed to have left the city the quest is taken up by other provincial and city police, the RCMP and if it affects areas they cover and police in the States. Two other detective sergeants cover the east and west divisions of the city.
He has one strict rule. “When a case is finished, I forget it,” he say. “If I see some one on the street that I have traced I ignore him unless he comes up to me. One should forget the past. It is the future that counts.”
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Bring Back Dufferin Square
Feast yer peepers on these two photos of long-lost and luscious Dufferin Square in the 1943, built on the spot of land now regrettably occupied by Complexe Guy Favreau, built in 1984 (in the colour photograph below). The first image appears to be looking South and the second looking East (click them to see them in their full glory). The square sat on Chenneville Street south of Dorchester Boulevard. Chenneville ran from Viger to Demaisonneuve but only a short stub at the southern tip survives. This 
square was home to the first Anglo Protestant Cemetery, alternately known as the Dorchester Cemetery, Dufferin Square Cemetery or St. Lawrence Cemetery, which stood there from 1799 to 1854 when it ran
out of space. The city expropriated it in 1871 and turned it into a park and moved the burial ground to Mount Royal in 1874 partially due to fears of cholera in cemeteries in populated areas. You'll note the Aldred Building visible in the background of the top picture, which was erected in 1931. Chenneville Street is where much of Montreal's Irish community lived before they moved to then-suburban Griffintown. It was home to as well as the city's first Synagogue from 1838 to 1890, and police station also sat there. Arthur Lee was born here in 1916, he became a Chinese food pioneer, his Wing Lung factory made the first bilingual fortune cookies (according to La Presse 13 Oct 1990) . If you want to imagine that the former anglo burial ground is haunted, consider that the Complex Guy Favreau started shedding bricks in 1988. Four years after it was built for the feds by Campeau Corp, bricks came tumbling down with great frequency, a situation which led to a costly $8 million in repairs.
City for sale
The St. Jacques Market at Ontario and Amherst is the latest of four properties that the city has sold in recent months. It went to developers Rosdev for $2.65 mil, well under its evaluation of $2.8 million. The new owner is free to do with it what he wants but an official said that the main floor will continue to sell food and the upstairs could become offices or housing.The city has also recently sold the Jacques-Viger building on St. Antoine East, a building on Sherbrooke East as well as its grenhouse in Terrebonne. The workers from those places have been consolidated in a building at 801 Brennan Street near Common.
Who used to live here? --- guesserooni
Anybody care to guess to whom this home belonged? Sorta an easy one, so I won't overdo it with the clues, except to say that it's one of the few Montrealers whose life was recounted in a full length movie. I chatted with the mailman who delivered letters to this famous soul and was told that yeah, we're talking about a kind and generous person, gifts at Christmas and the like.
-Answer: Yes it's Maurice Richard. It's up in Ahuntsic on the Back River, just up from Gouin, the SW corner of Stanley Park and Peloquin to be exact.
Words of wisdom for the kids
He's been named the Most Outstanding player of his division and the league. He's set records and then gone and broken them all over again. He wears a Grey Cup ring. And he's about to enter his tenth season as Alouettes quarterback.By anybody's measure, Anthony Calvillo makes a pretty good role model. That's why he's this year's honorary spokesman with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Montreal.
But one thing this self-effacing CFL superstar would rather take a pass on is the idea that kids should look up to him and other celebrities as their main role models.
"The one thing I stress to young kids is to look in your own circle for role models," the Los Angeles-born CFL superstar told J.D. for a Gazette article yesterday.
So who did he look up to? Who encouraged him to learn values of teamwork and fair play?
"My role model was my mother," he said by cell phone from L.A., where the Montreal resident was visiting friends and family. "She was always working very hard to supply food for us and teach us the right things."
He's not dissing media darlings -- they're people, too. As he puts it, "Just because you see someone on TV, you don't always know what they're about."
Instead, he says teenagers could look to people they know personally and turn to for support.
"Look at teachers, a parent, a coach," he says. "They're there in your life every day. And those are the people that try to get you headed in the right direction."
Just don't expect those role models to bring home the '07 Grey Cup. Go Ant!
Monday, January 29, 2007
New tradition - sadly already sold out
On Sunday February 25, 2007 at 8:30 a.m. the Montreal High Lights winter festival will be holding the second annual 5 km underground run, in which 750 participants will dash through the hallways of the underground city (pdf map here). Last years was the first and it was apparently a huge hit. It's entirely free to enter, it doesn't cost a cent. But that's part of the problem. The event has already been sold out. Sorry, too late to join in on the fun. Put those stinky running shoes away. Now I don't want to tell the 
Montreal High Lights Festival how to get things done, I'm a mind-my-own-business kinda guy as you can see, but it seems that they could easily charge $100 per participant and give $75,000 to charity. Sadly, it's organized by Velo Quebec, which is famously anti-charity so don't expect them to embrace that concept. At the very least schedule a couple of more runs before and after on the same day. Call 288-9955 or write montrealhighlights@equipespectra.ca to state your point of view if you have one.
Ice ice everywhere but not an inch to skate
Hard to skate on snow.We've been blessed with great hockey weather recently so everybody in the area with a pair of skates has been coming out to parks to lace 'em on and do some good ole fashioned skatin'.
Except one little thing. After the blue collar workers put the boards up in Oxford Park the borough of NDG has simply neglected to pour water on the ground to allow people to skate. I bet they've done the same thing elsewhere too.
Countless complaints, phone calls and general bellyaching to the Borough Mayor Michael Applebaum and in this case the current (for how much longer?) City Councillor Marcel Tremblay about this incredible lapse of duty have so far gone unanswered. My phone has been buzzing with complaints about this and a protest is supposedly in the works.
Cotroni Inc. longtime HQ
This cottage at 1840 St. Timothee, just northeast of Amherst and Ontario, might look generic and innocuous but it was the HQ for one of the most cunning, brutal and fearless crime families this city has seen. It's where Frank Cotroni lived after flying the coop a couple of doors down at 1828 St. Timothy. In the mid-50s he was listed as a carpenter, (pdf) living here with his widowed mom. Frank was in fact a Mafia kingpin who routinely ordered his hitman Real Simard to kill enemies upon orders from New York.
In Cotroni's cookbook, published just prior to his death, ol' Cold Eyes describes how his family would carry back live animals from the market on the bus to this "east end" home where they'd get slaughtered and cooked up. Ah, good times, good times.
That family home was a couple of doors down. It's gone. A park is there instead.
Perhaps I'll muse and speculate about this tonight on my brief radio chat with the excellent Picard at 10:25 p.m. Mondays on 990 AM, tune in if you're bored.
No public funeral for the Gump
"Years ago my mother and father decided that he would have a private service," Lianne, his daughter, tells Coolopolis. "He was a very private person."
But there will be memories. Lianne said that even though her dad moved out to the Beloeil, he always remembered his days growing up at 420 Congregation in the Point. "We used to go for drives all the time down there. He'd tell us how he'd play hockey with road apples, using phone books as pads. He had fond memories, funny memories of life there. You couldn't play long in the spring because the apples would get soft."
Gump went into the hospital on a Monday and died on the Friday.
"The hospital was excellent," says Lianne. "He got excellent care.
They came quickly when we phoned 911 and took good care of them. But there was nothing they could do."
BTW, you might have wondered why Worsley was named Gump. He got the nickname for his apparent likeness to a comic character who looked like this.
Chickadee Grove, Montreal PQ
Just a short walk from the downtown skyscrapers of Concordia Salus sits an idyllic natural oasis called Chickadee Grove. Those with good karma and fresh bird seed can enjoy the visceral visit of tiny ravished
chickadees and Great Tits (yes that's the real name of a bird) descending right onto their hand to feed. In this photograph, local celebrated musician Barry Henderson demonstrates the proper technique and the infectious joy the practice brings with it. The picture was taken just a couple of weeks ago, before the snow and ice enveloped mother earth. I'm bad at keeping secrets so if there's any interest at all, I'll likely reveal the secret location of Chickadee Grove a little later today once I wrestle with my conscience about the ethics of breaking this closely held secret. Check back later.Ok. I'm back. The magic birdie spot is on Mount Royal, somewhere just up from the Tam Tams, ie, where those crazy hippies play drums in the summer on Park Avenue. The exact whereabouts in the woods beyond that isn't entirely clear to me.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
35 th annivesary of senseless downtown demolitions
At the corner of Peel and St. Antoine you'll find Windsor Station on the NW corner, Place du Canada NE, Canada Post and federal immigration offices on the SE.
What happened to the Southwest corner?
Here is the sad tale of how that spot was needlessly to become a barren parking lot. It was slated to be part of the highway and several nice places were demolished, including the One Minute Lunch.
The Gazette, Montreal, Saturday Feb 5, 1972
End of a lifestyle
Construction of an access road for Trans-Canada Highway link, expected to be completed by 1975, signals the closing of several small business es along St. Antoine Street at Peel. Although the Quebec Department of Roads has not announced a date for their destruction a spokesman for the department estimated a month to two months.
He said the buildings included the Skyway Texaco Gas station, Daytona Motors, the Annex Restaurant, the Empire Tavern, the One Minute Lunch, all along St. Antoine Street and about 20 rooms of the Colonial Hotel, which extends along St. Antoine and down Peel.
The rest of the hotel will be untouched, said the spokesman. Most of the employees in the various restaurant sand businesses have not found other jobs, although Herve Tousignant, who works at the Texaco station, said the eight men there will move to a station in Point St. Charles under the same ownership.
Alex Panopalis, who employs four people in his Annex Restaurant, said that finding work will be the hardest thing for people left jobless because of the highway.
"It will be hard, too, if I want to open another restaurant. No matter where I got in the city it is going to cost me more. And I'd say that is the same with anyone who wants to stay in business."
By LINDA DIEBEL
Of The Gazette
The lifestyle of one old man must seem inconsequential to the planners of a super highway.
An old man who each day for 45 and a half years opened up his restaurant at 5:30 in the morning and closed it again at nine at night. And was proud because he thought he offered the most popular prices and fastest service in town.
"Our name is One Minute Lunch and we stick to it."
Perhaps to bulldozer-minded road developers John Panopolis is a little man, and the closing of his One Minute Lunch at Peel and St. Antoine streets for an access road to the multi-million dollar Trans Canada highway extension through lower Montreal is incidental. After
all, that's progress.
But in every way this 81-year-old man with the misted blue eyes has "tried my best to make people happy. And me… well, that just comes."
John Panopalis – the restaurateur in his simple rented premises – has lines in his face. Around the eyes and mouth especially they crinkle upwards. And that, surely is the mark of success.
"But now I have to close and maybe it is time. I have a plot in Mount Royal cemetery waiting for me. My wife is there, my children. I am content just to wait."
But for at least another month – none of the businessmen along St. Antoine at Peel have been notified of the exact date of expropriation by the Quebec Department of Roads – John Panopalis will serve his customers, some of whom have been coming for years and years.
"I tell you though; I'm going to miss my friends here. Since the sixth of August, 1926 I've been working in my place and I want to know where my customers are going to get a good cup of
coffee. My people come here every day."
People like Bartholomew Coady. At 75 he's almost as old as his pal John Panopalis.
He slouched over a plate of spaghetti at the back of the restaurant, staring down at his food, and occasionally scooping up a mouthful. He made his pleasure obvious. Batholomew Coady is a grizzled old character and that day looked rather flamboyant in a tattered shirt with a scarf tied around his neck cowboy-style.
IT'S A HABIT
For 36 years, during 25 of which he worked at the post office just across the street, he's been coming to the Minute Lunch. Each noon hour for the other 11 years he has walked from his home on Murray St., a good 15 minute walk for an old man.
"Well, that's just habit. Yeah. It's like home for me here, and I just couldn't imagine doing anything else," he said, still shoveling in the spaghetti.
"Besides, me and John's friends."
Most of Panopalis' customers work at the post office, Windsor Station for the CPR, Central Station for the CNR, The Gazette, and other offices in the area. The closing of the Minute Lunch will limit their lunchtime choice.
Both George Joslin of the CPR and Jean Dulude, of the CNR, have been regulars for the past five years because of "the good food, quick services, and the change of menu every day." They say they aren't looking forward to cafeteria food in nearby office buildings.
"It's bad to see a place close down just because the government decides it wants to do something. I think it's a mistake," said Maurice Dupuis, who drives a taxi and often grabs a bite at the Minute Lunch.
"I haven't got a clue what I'm going to do now. You know there is nothing worse than having to wait for lunch," confirmed Dan Winnard of the CPR, a trim man who has eaten at the Minute Lunch for 24 and a half years.
"I've now got 50 minutes for lunch now. You know I used to get 60, but now it's shorter. I can get a meal of meat and vegetables, and sometimes soup or a salad, at a reasonable prices, and still have time to take a walk. I think having a bit of recreation on your lunchtime is very important. What am I supposed to do now?"
Winnard talked about small things. About the difference of 10 minutes on a lunch hour. About a slightly longer walk to another restaurant.
Trivialities perhaps to the planners of a super-highway which at last count will probably cost the provinces at least $300 million.
But Winnard has gotten the impression that his individual needs are the last consideration. He doesn't believe that people like him are taken seriously.
Except for Rose Lovelunck, a waitress at the One Minute Lunch for 15 years.
`WE'LL MISS HIM'
"Ah, we're going to miss him," she said, warmly putting her arm around Winnard's shoulders. "He's been one of our best." "I know all the faces here. My customers are worried and they tell me they don't know where they'll go. I think they are crazy to build this highway through and mess up everyone's lives."
She wonders where she will find work, "especially somewhere I'll be happy as I am here. I love it. It's good with the boss because he's like a father to us. Ahhh…my family and I hate to leave."
Annette Miller, a newcomer with only two years experience as a waitress, is a little more cynical.
"I knew it was too good. Everyone is happy here."
In the kitchen, chef Anastasious Trichas slapped mustard and ham on bread amid steaming pots of soup and rows of hamburger patties laid out on the table.
"This is the first job I had after coming from Greece over 18 years ago. Before that my father worked here. It is my life."
Jan Andrikos didn't want to talk about the closing. He has washed dishes there for 35 years.
There was not much more to say. All these people working for the old man.
"I don't' know why everyone stays so long," said John Panopalis. "I know only I like having them with me."
SOUGHT A FUTURE
"It will be sad when the place is gone. Look at our food," and he pointed to the menu with bacon and eggs for 65 cents, a ham omelet for 80 cents, and a breaded veal cutlet for 90 cents.
"The 22nd of October, 1907 I came from Greece. I came alone for a future… for a better life. I am satisfied now. But things are changing. I don't know. Maybe they change too much."
Prodigal author speaks
If you had wanted to meet Rawi Hage about this time last year, your best bet would have been to call a taxi. Provided you had dialed at the right time, this fortyish Montreal driver would have arrived at your front gate and tooted his horn, impatient to get back home and to work on his next novel.When we first met this charismatic, Beirut-born writer at a Walrus Magazine function in Old Montreal last spring, he was still a relative unknown. We talked and drank Hennesy and Czech beer together, jawing with a few local writerly types who can keep up their ends of a good chat. But suddenly, Rawi was gone, having been collared by attractive young women who enjoy a good story well told.
Rawi tells good stories well. He has had an extraordinary life, and it shows in his work, which created something of a sensation in the last half of 2006. His debut novel, De Niro's Game is a story of two friends growing up in the Lebanese Civil War, a time of conflict Rawi remembers all too well.
His told us his first memory was of being ushered under the kitchen table by his mother as mortar shells rained down on the family home. He grew up in a crater-scarred landscape and played in underground bomb shelters. But it wasn't a lost youth and you can see it in his writing: besides the blood and the bombs, people have an elevated passion for living, scamming and always making love like it will be your last time. Somehow, he packs all that into a book that's simultaneously harrowing and hilarious.
Back to the point of this post: Rawi Hage will be reading from his award-winning novel De Niro's Game this Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. at the Atwater Library (1200 Atwater at Tupper -- 514 935-7344). There will be an English and French discussion after that, featuring panelists Marwan Hassan, Kathryn Radford, Najat Rahman and Gaétan Soucy.
Here's a bit more about Hage: In the early '80s, he emigrated to New York City and had a pretty crummy time there before moving to Canada, where his spoken French helped open the door. He studied at Dawson and then at Concordia (Fine Arts), where he became a master photographer. He was invited to participate in the 2001 exhibition of Middle Eastern artists at the Museum of Civilization that was abruptly -- and embarrassingly -- cancelled for its "Arabness" just after the 9/11 attacks. But Hage and his fellow artists launched a media counterassault that resulted in then-Prime Minister Jean Chretien's support for the boycotted show, which went ahead shortly after.
The museum then assigned Hage to photograph several remarkable Canadians. But after the deal was made, the museum tacked on the stipulation that Hage record a minute-by-minute diary of his expenses. Disgusted by the micromanagement, he kept a journal all right. But instead of budget records, he wrote fictional short stories and handed them in to his bosses.
Rather than bellow at him the way a Mr. Dithers or J. Jonah Jameson might, the Museum of Civilization's administration told him they were fine stories and they added them to their permanent collection. They also advised him to apply for federal grants. He did and he got 'em, using the money to write his first novel.
Hage sent his manuscript to various publishers, uninvited. Then somebody at the House of Anansi Press (where Maggie Atwood got her start) picked it out of their "slush pile," read it, liked it and signed Hage up on the spot.
Within a few months, Hage had achieved the unthinkable for a new writer: twin nominations to Canada's most prestigious book prizes, The Giller and The Governor General's Literary Awards.
In the end, both awards went to other writers, but Hage has been on one hell of a ride, and we haven't heard the last from this lover of beautiful women, social justice, Chinese food and Cuban cigarillos. Anansi will be publishing his second novel, which is set in contemporary Montreal, and a third is in manuscript form as we speak.
Learn brass with $0 in pocket
If you want to learn the trumpet, forget Lauren Bacall's advice to Bogie in To Have and Have Not: "Just put your lips together and blow."
It's a lot trickier than that. Trumpet playing takes larnin', and now here's the trumpet-learning offer you can't refuse: free trumplet lessons every Sunday at 3 p.m. in the downstairs hall of St. Gabriel's church basement (2157 Centre St., corner Laprairie, east of Charlevoix Metro) in Point St. Charles.
That's the winter rehearsal spot for the Montreal Drum Line -- a corps of 20 musicians who play snares, quints, toms and cymbals. They've now added ten brand new trumpets to their arsenal of sound and they're looking for a few good players. All you need is a desire to learn. After that, you can see if the corp's right for you. It's a committed group, and they get paid for their gigs, says MTL Drumline Director Richard Baxter, 43 (seen here drumming with sticks 'o fire).
"They're professionals," the 30-year drumming veteran told Coolopolis last night. "I pay every player -- not much, depending on the contract. I usually pay ten bucks an hour."But most people join to become better drummers.
"It's the best drumming course in Canada," he says. "No doubt about it."
The youngest corps member is 16. The oldest is 49-year-old Jeff Simon, who happens to be no less than Ginette Reno's drummer when he's not on the line with the MTL Drumline.
The MTL Drumline started about a year ago, and they've tried out more than 60 drummers. The corps has been pared down to 20, with a couple of spots open. Besides the new horn line that you are invited to join, they're also looking for a few women to spin flags, rifles and similar props in synch with the street beats and grooves.
They do the same kind of stuff as the Blue Devils, Santa Clara Vanguards and Madison Scouts. Last fall, the MTL Drumline had two televised Santa Claus Parade appearances -- one in the South Shore, one in Maisonneuve. They marched 2 1/2 hours in the latter. Their next live appearance is at Cafe Campus on Feb. 17.
If Richard looks familiar, he is. You've seen him busking on St. Cat. He plows most of the money he makes back into his corps. You can see his stuff on YouTube, along with some performances by the uniformed MDL -- minus their new hats, which have just arrived in the mail.
In the long run, the MTL Drumline see themselves playing half times at Alouette home games. So that could be you on the 50-yard line at Percival Molson Stadium, playing before thousands of spectators. Today the trumpet, tomorrow the CFL! You can start making this dream happen by ringing Richard on (514) 937-1905.
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Welcome to Monselet Street, stick around and enjoy it
Some vintage signage on Monselet Street in that quadrant just southwest of Pie IX and Henri Bourassa, I'm not quite sure whether that's Villeray, or Montreal North or whatever. The Gaz sign contains 57 bulbs. I wonder who gets the job of replacing those when they burn out. I don't know if it's lit up at night. The Schweppes has to be at least 30 years old, as does the Taverne. The Depanneaubaine sign, about a block up must've seemed like a good idea at the time. Plus there's a barber shop, a vacant hall and a Haitian restaurant. I'm not suggesting you go to Monselet, but at the very least next time it's mentioned you won't be able to say, "never heard of it." 
Gump Worsley RIP
Sad to report that Gump Worsley has died, age 77.I had a thing for the Gump.
I used to phone him. He'd never agree to an interview. He just mumbled that he didn't want to do it.
Others who knew him said, "oh well that's Gump."
I once put his photo on hot or not and he got 8.4, so he certainly must've had some female admirers.
Not a great run for former Habs goalies. Dryden got creamed at the Liberal leadership, Michel Plasse died and Jose Theodore is riding the pine.
A special breed of man comes here Fridays
This might look like a reg'l'r bar to you, but to certain Montrealers it's an oasis of profound significance. Every Friday you'll see some slightly disoriented, perhaps overenthusiastic men in carrying paper bags. They sit down and order a beer. They're in no rush.
Don't stare. These are a special breed of men.
Quiz time is up. Here's your answer: these men are on a weekend pass, aka a code, or have completed their sentence at the provincial prison down the road.
One of these men told me
last year: "When your sentence is finished you go out with a brown paper
bag with all of your stuff in it. You take the 69 Gouin West all the way to the end. We go to the brasserie at the end. The waitresses know where we're from. We're from Bordeaux Beach. That's where the guys end up. That's the place to start. It's Friday. Friday, January 26, 2007
For whom the bell tolls ... not!
Word has it local übervixen Jennifer Finnigan, star of the CBS legal drama Close to Home, is too busy shooting to tie the knot with her fiancé of two years, Jonathan Silverman, actor on ABC's mid-season replacement series, In Case of Emergency.
In an interview carried on the National "Not Heath" Ledger, the broody and heart-throbby Silverman lamented that the duo won't march to wedding chimes before summer at the earliest.
If you miss tonight's episode of Close to Home (9 p.m. on CBS), here's our cheat sheet: Finnigan's character (Annabeth Chase) will try to find corroborating evidence and a motive in order to convict a mother of four for the murder of her husband after the defendant's claim of self-defense is deemed questionable.
Don't you hate when that happens?
J-Finn, 28, is daughter of Jack Finnigan aka JP Finnigan, (veteran CJAD broadcaster and quizmaster) who died of natural causes at 65 last month. She first made waves in Student Bodies and her US break came with Bold and the Beautiful, which scored her a hat trick of daytime Emmys. She moved to prime time with Crossing Jordan followed by a leading role on Close to Home.
These days, Silverman's colleagues of the thespian variety include Jane Seymour, David Arquette, Kelly Hu and Lori Loughlin. Nice woik if you can get it.
Blood on the snow
This is the sight of cold blooded murder.
At around 2 am last night when it was about -30 degrees celcius, a 16 year old boy named Tyrell Jacobs was chased through the laneway near Girouard and Upper Lachine and shot dead. From what I could tell the victim is likely a young black man who had left
home to get into the crack sales trade. I might've known him by sight but perhaps not. I bumped into Stephane Giroux of
CTV News who brought me in the truck where he sent in his streeters and then did a standup live report, practicing the secret art of enunciating with frozen cheeks.
Stamping out Montreal
At your bidding today is this hand-made, sterling silver plate, by the late Montreal silversmith, Carl Poul Petersen (1895 - 1977). If you wanted to do a Buy It Now on this small item, you'd have to shell out more than $3,000 Canadian.
The Danish-born Petersen learned his silversmithing talents as an apprentice to great Dane, Georg Jensen himself. He liked George, but he loved his daughter, Inger, slipped what was probably a pretty nice ring on her finger and sailed off to Montreal, god knows why, on the eve of the Great Depression. He became the master Goldsmith at Birk's in '32 before going it alone -- and then back to Birk's -- and finally got the formula right for his own operation, C.P. Petersen & Sons, in the mid-'40s. (His shop was located at 1221 Mackay in '55.)In 1948, the National Hockey League named Pedersen the Stanley Cup's official engraver; he made the replica cup that's awarded every year to the championship team.
But Petersen's bread and butter was in the wedding-gift trade, making solid silver dishes and services for tea and dessert, plates, platters, candlesticks and bar accessories. The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts held an exhibition of his work back in 2003.
And now for something completely different: bidding on this ruggedly homely medallion starts at $49.
It's a commemorative coin stamped out for the Montreal police force back in '97 and appears to celebrate three interdependent communities: cops, ho's and pimps. In all fairness, the guy who's selling it seems to know coins, and this is one of only 200 such pressed. If you check out the dealer's rare, flawed coins on his eBay store, you'll easily imagine him (or her) with a magnifying glass shoved in his eye, checking every coin that passes his palm. Wonder if panhandlers do that, too.
Speaking of the Stanley Cup, our last-but-not-least exhibit, is this not-very-unique sports medal -- also for sale on eBay. It was awarded back in 1914 by the now bankrupted and much lamented Montreal Amateur Athletic Association (no, I don't mean that knock-off, frou frou, Toronto-run health club that's squatting in the glorious remains of the city's great sporting association). The M.A.A. was the very same club that won the first cup given by Lord Stanley's representatives in 1893 (Stan himself never got to bestow the cup himself, having already sailed home to Old Blighty). They won a bunch after that, too. The team's usually written up as Montreal A.A.A.
Nowadays, all those A's might just as well stand for "anyway." Anyway No. 1: Nice ingot. It was awarded to a W. I. Brebner, an electrical engineer living on Park Ave. -- probably in the YMCA that still stands, where bodacious babes used to be ogled by devout Jewish lads, despite themselves and the efforts of their rabbis. Anyway No. 2: Awards like this are pretty common and aren't worth a whole lot, even though they are pretty and made of pure sterling silver. Anyway No. 3: If you want to know more about the old M.A.A.A. , give Normand Laplante a call at (819) 934-7390. He's the M.A.A.A. archivist.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Construction moves off the island
These are photos of cost overruns in action - on the St-Hubert side of the splashy new UQAM campus being built at the corner of Ontario (right in front of where an old mansion was recently demolished after they refused to include it in the project).If you've lived in Montreal for more than five minutes, you'll know that any time you see a hardhat, you'll find a scam to rip off the government.
Metro cost overruns are a classic topped only by the Olympic Stadium project where union leader-slash-thug Dede Desjardins bossed the 
bureaucrats around... and oh you can't forget Mirabel Airport.
Busac Real Estate owns the block and leases it to UQAM for 30 years, after that they give it to the university. This being the land of irrelevant smokescreens, we've instead been worried about the silly issue of how many parking spots are in the project. Some pushed for there to be fewer spots on the site for whatever reason that seems entirely beyond my comprehension. 800 spots were slated but students and other fringers pushed it down to 500. Not sure if they planned a hunger strike in order to achieve this. Half the 500 would be for clients of the bus terminus and half for UQAM workers/tenants of the offices. Of that latter 250, 100 will be earmarked for hybrid cars and car poolers. I guess Hydro Quebec is supposed to build those hybrid cars. The 300 sacrificed car space go to bicycles & showers for the riders.We can anticipate several other upcoming tax-sucking fiascos. A Life Science Pavillion at McGill -budgeted at $70,000,000.00 and UQAM's ETS project at Peel and Notre Dame $64,000,000.00, and farther down we'll see a Universite de Sherbrooke campus in Longueuil for $75,000,000.00 and a downtown concert hall $105,000,000.00, two superhospitals for $1,600,000,000.00, St. Justine's hospital expansion $500,000,000.00, the U of M's Outremont campus $800,000,000.00. Take these numbers, multiply by three, add salty tears and stir.
Almost all city projects are hooked in with the government. Our private sector hasn't built a single office tower here since 1992. Ontario's per capita investment is 28 percent higher than ours and Stats Can reports that over in the new millenium our head offices have declined from 596 to 536.
But quite a bit of off-island construction is being built. Mirabel airport will become an aquarium, indoor beaches and a KidTropolis mini-city for kids in the Reveport project, costing $300,000,000.00. Nearby Lac Mirabel will have a 3,000 seat auditorium and Quartier Dix30 in Brossard will be built for $350,000,000.00 and the $700,000,000.00 Faubourg Boisbriand will be on the GM site. There's talk also of a big money development in Candiac. Nun's Island is also loaded with projects, including one that will see 3,000 Bell Canada workers moved over there next year.
Montrealers are abandoning the city for the suburbs and the process will only accelerate. At the very moment we're building new campuses, enrollment in on-island schools is in free fall, U of M enrollment in the city declined five percent last fall and another five percent in this semester. Kids are living off the island and they prefer to drive to school near their homes.
So the downtowncentric crowd assumes that suburbanites are constitutionally required to come downtown, perhaps because they're hypnotized by the PVM beacon. So we keep the bridges jammed and dream up fantastic plans to force 60 year old female office clerks to ride their bikes over the Jacques Cartier bridge in minus 22 degree weather or make them pay $6.00 for two hours of parking.
Jackie Robinson lived here...or here..or here...
If there were any justice, Jackie Robinson would still be alive and might even be dropping in on Montreal for his 88 th birthday next Wednesday.When Jackie Robinson broke the pro baseball colour barrier in Montreal, fans would salute him by screaming "vive le noir" when he slashed out his hits. He lived not far from St. Joe and the Main. Precisely put, he lived on De Gaspe Street where it starts just North of Laurier. Isadore Don Albin now an old timer - but then a cub reporter - interviewed Robinson.
Thanks to Robinson, Albin a mere newswire clerk- who now lives on St. John's Boulevard in the West Island and is visually impaired - broke his byline barrier. Albin can't remember precisely which home it was, but he remembers that Robinson was living in a building owned by French Quebec landlord on this row and that the landlord "was very kind." The records (pdf) of that street indicate that could really
be any number of homes. Here's what Albin tells Coolopolis."I was a copyboy at Canadian Press, I had worked for a year. I looked after the teletype machines. There was a message on the teletype one day which said that New York wants 300 words on what Jackie Robinson thinks of going to the Dodgers. I tore it off the machine and gave it to Doug Amaron, a veteran war correspondent. I went about my business and half an hour later he said, "go and interview him." I took it calmly. I met Robinson behind home plate at the old Delormier Stadium, which was on the corner of Ontario. I spoke to him for about an hour. He was very tense. I could sense it. He was told to watch what he said by Branch Rickey, GM of the Dodgers."
Robinson nailed a couple of hits later that day. Albin's interview was a hit too. It received a ton of play across America and launched his career.
Quiz time......
Who can guess the historic significance of this address - 5257 St-Urbain - near Fairmount? Answer coming later.
Mauro Biello Soccer sweetheart
Chatted with Mauro Biello of the Montreal Impact, who at 34 is not only the team's leading all-time scorer, he is the team's ambassador, runs a wintertime soccer school and is married into the Impact's brass (Nick De Santis is his brother-in-law). His wife has blessed him with a 2 year old and a nine month old, both boys. He grew up on Bessboro in NDG, moved to Mayfair, and his parents still live on Clanranald. He lives "out East" in Montreal now. I asked him this week whether Toronto's departure to the MLS, which now has David Beckham, might hurt the North American USL First Division, where the Impact play. "I don't think it's going to hurt our team. I think it's just going to allow us to produce more talent. We've established a strong team here and produced a lot of good players who have gone on to play in Europe. Some have left to play in Toronto but I don't foresee any downturn."He sees Beckham as boosting the fortunes of soccer on this continent. "Fans will go out and see him but I don't think his game will be as much of an impact as his popularity."
Biello says the hard work cultivating community support has paid off. "We need to be close to the community and be role models for young kids. If they have someone to look up to and emulate, that's great. The first year we averaged 3,500 per game and now it's 12,000 fans per game. Registrations are up, there's a buzz around the city about the Montreal Impact in the summer, whether we win or lose and I think that's great."
As for the stadium, which appears to be in a bit of limbo since it's been shifted from the West side to the East end, "I know it's been approved for the location near the Olympic Stadium and is going through various committees and paperwork is being finalized."
As for how many more years Biello will play. "I try to stay healthy and take it one year at a time. I still have one year left on my contract. I'll see after that."
On Tuesday Biello - who was 24 credits short of graduating Urban Planning at Con U before they axed theprogram - had some inspiring words for Marymount students on Tuesday: "Be organized, be prepared for what you need to encounter. Work on your discipline. I'm disciplined and take care of my body. I love what I'm doing. I'm passionate about it. I have friends who work in an office nine-to-five and they say how much they would love to trade places with me. I love my career."
Here's also a real ham, as you'll see in this ad he did for a local TV station.
If you have to see one play this year....
These devilishly triumphant post-curtain-call grins belong to lead actor Gianpaolo Venuta and director Guy Sprung of The Elephant Song, a play on until Feb. 11 at Bain St. Michel at St. Dump and Maguire. It's an actual former swimming pool and the actors perform up where young'uns would dive in. They work a clever script recently penned by local writer Nicolas Billon about a manipulative psyche patient being interrogated about the whereabouts of a missing staffer. The part-Equus part-Cukoo's Nest tale tells of a crazy kid obsessed with elephants. After some fractious back-and-forth, the kid opens up to the institute's director telling of his lonely childhood being neglected by an operatic diva mother, his sense of responsibility for her death and the crushing disappointment of his only
encounter with his father. A third character, a hefty nurse, warns the director that the boy is a cunning lad who's plotting some devious plan. At the end we discover the boy's true agenda. The actors are excellent and the play promises boasting rights to those who might one day say that they saw it staged for the first time. Sprung - the director - is, of course, a highly-respected director, author, actor who has been creating local drama all the way since directing Balconville eons ago. Venuta and the other two cast mates offer top-notch performances as well. It's highly recommended, 4****'s. Wednesdays to Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m. 987-1774, Local 3, $25, less for students and seniors.
First degree Burns
Should auld acquaintance be forgot? Sometimes yeah, and if you've ever attended a high-school reunion, you'll know what we mean. Now here are a few things not to forget: for starters, the ingredients that actually go into the haggis that the St. Andrew's Society of Montreal will serve at tomorrow night's annual Burns Night Dinner, to be held at the University Club in honour of Scotland's national bard.
In the West End, Peggy Regan's Gryphon D'Or on Monkland (485-7377) is also serving up the haggis today - Quebec regulations don't allow it to actually be cooked in sheep's stomach so it's done in cheesecloth of directly in the pot, so the squeamish needn't back off, "it's really no different than a sausage,"Regan tells Coolopolis.But if eating a sheep's stomach and the heart and lungs of a lamb aren't your idea of good snackin', then save your appetite for your head and take in a free lecture today at 12:30 p.m. at the Atwater Library (1200 Atwater at Tupper -- 514 935-7344). The Rev. J.S.S. Armour, whose works include a history of Montreal's Scots , will deliver a talk titled Some Scots in Montreal to honour the birthday of Robbie Burns.
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
This Justin: Timberlake 4 free!
The giveaway is your chance to win free tickets. Orchid will be drawing a pair of tickets Friday and another pair on Saturday. Your hosts Daniel and the guys at DP Entertainment are still dreaming up novel and relatively dignified ways to select ticket winners, but so far it looks like they'll be giving them away at 1 a.m. each night based on a draw of coat-check stubs. So this weekend is not the time to pull that classic cheapskate move of skipping the coatcheck by leaving your coat in the car.
But if you happen to be a skinflint, there's still time to get on the guest list and save yourself a $10 cover charge. Just get in touch with the folks at Orchid and tell them Coolopolis sent you.
$60 mil for a secretive traffic mess
While nonsense discussions about Park Avenue and the skateboard park have attracted the headlines, the city's Ex. Council has sneakily voted itself $60 mil to bugger up the roads in the West End to benefit the McGill Superhospital.
Most galling is the fact that they have laid out $1.7 million for the offices of the planners of this monstrosity.
It is going to an agglomeration council vote tonight and almost all details remain secret. I live in an area that will be greatly damaged by the plan as the proposal is to cut us off from the main access to the city.
People in this area are up in arms and yet the powers that be - with the exception of the always admirable Warren Allmand - have ignored the pleas for a better plan.
One person deeply involved in the struggle, a sharp mind with a very good counterplan is Peter McQueen who can be reached through his site defendndg.com
St. Gabe's faces the axe tonight
Tonight seems to be day that St. Gabriel's school on Center in the Point gets closed down for good by the EMSB. Sadly it's a Sophie's choice between it and Westmount Park School. Some of the arguments that were brought forward by Warren Allmand and a number of others at yesterday's Save St. Gabe's press conference (photos from www.thepoint.ca) include the fact that about 80 percent of the students at St. Gabriel's walk to school and now they'll all have to take a bus to WPS. The parents there aren't rich so they don't have cars and will have trouble getting up there to see their kids in case of an emergency. St. Gabriels has a hot lunch program and is the only English school in that area, whereas Westmount already has a multitude of schools, including Roslyn. Westmount Park School is very run-down whereas St. Gabe is pretty spiffy. Also, Westmount Park School is on highly-coveted real estate which could be sold off for a bundle and that cash could be injected into the school system. But it looks like St. Gabe's will close and WPS will remain open.
The Kremlin is calling
Lovely Violeta, 20, invites you to The Kremlin, her family's Russian restaurant on Beaver Hall
Hill. The eats are loaded with sour cream and musical acts on weekends.
Tobogganers row all fenced up
Tobogganing is a Great Canadian Sport, but it gets no respect. Traditionally the best slope in this tidy burg for your snowy magic carpet ride is in Westmount's King George Park, aka Murray Hill where ole time safety measures involved simply stacking up bales of hay at the bottom so your ride doesn't bring you into traffic on Cote St. Antoine. More recently they've taken to putting up fences to discourage you from this course, although if you can maneuver through the that small gap - easier said than done - you could get some speed. The adjacent bunny hill (to the right, not in the picture) is unobstructed and offers at least a bit of a thrill. I'd slam Westmount for wrecking the party, but in fact sledding is a wickedly dangerous sport where kids take boots to the head on a regular basis, helmets should be mandatory, perhaps someone could design a tuque-helmet for the occasion.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
If this is Tuesday, it must be Pizza Time!
So why does the downtown Domino's Pizza (1439 Dorch -- 514 398-9898) offer this ludicrously cheap, take-away special every Tuesday? Apparently, it ain't for the money. They don't really show a profit on the special, according to store manager Pierre Leblanc. He says it's a goodwill gesture for their loyal and growing customer base and not bad marketing at that. "Tuesdays at lunchtime, it's rock 'n' roll in here," says the 18-year Domino's veteran. "We sell at least 200 of the 14-inchers with one topping. At least 60 people carry them out. And they don't take just one, they'll pick up four or five."
The Tuesday special, especially at lunch hour, keeps Leblanc's team hustling harder than Lucille Ball at the chocolate factory. And when you get down to it, isn't that just the way everybody likes working? Uh. No, not really. But Leblanc and crew work like a fine Swiss timepiece and when you do that, the days fly by in the wink of an eye.
And so do the years. Leblanc joined the Domino's outlet when it first opened in a strip mall on St. James St. -- a couple of blocks south. But ever since they made the move uptown back in the '90s, business has soared 25-50 per cent every year. Double-digit growth? That's pretty crazy, too.
20 th anniversary of Unitarian church blaze - new condos slated
May 25 is the 20 th anniversary of the criminal blaze which razed the 1906-built Church of the Redeemer, which boasted some of the most impressive architecture and stained glass this city will ever know.The Unitarian church at Sherbrooke and Simpson was torched in a suicide attempt by the church's organist, transsexual Wilhelmina Tiemersma, 38, who was a suicidal man named William before getting an operation in 1984 and becoming a suicidal Wilhelmina. That was not to be the only organ that she would destroy.
S/he - who had been institutionalized in an insane asylum for a month in 1970 - answered an ad and became the organist of the place until May 25, 1987 when she came in and opened a gas valve and lit music manuscripts from the 1840s with a candle and left to roam the city. S/he confessed to being
aware that the church caretaker Ruben Pradier, his wife and two kids would likely die as a result of her actions, although she returned six hours later to warn them to leave.Firemen Pierre Letourneau, 31 and Jean-Pierre Longpre, 32, both fathers of three young children, died when a wall collapsed on them while they were perched on a ladder dousing the inferno.
S/he was originally charged with second-degree murder but was only sentenced to eight years for criminal negligence causing death. She was sentenced in 1988 and released in 1990. In 1991 she was invited to give an organ concert at Christ Church Cathetdral. She is reportedly still alive, on welfare.
The Unitarians moved their operations to the corner of Claremont and De Maisonneuve, coincidentally not far from the friend's house who Willie was visiting when being sent into a rage when told to stop complaining about her mother again..
An unoccupied connecting building stood as the only sad survivor of the devastation, which was photographed by an urban adventurer on another site, whose photo I gratefully reprint here. That part of the church has been demolished and the current site will soon become condos.
Here's a photograph taken today by the ever-excellent JD Gravenor of some of the guys milling around the site.
Russian sleight of hand...
This Russian magician often does his act in a restaurant on Beaver Hall. Yesterday he - along with his scrumptious assistant Olena - provided my camera a few brief magical scenes. They are for hire, call 733-4170.
Mario Bachand's old stomping grounds...
This spot at 3694 St. Christophe Street was once home to one of Canada's leading terrorists. Mario Bachand lived here in the mid 60s while plotting some of the FLQ capers. He spent time in Cuba before eventually moving to Paris where he was murdered, a crime that has inspired much speculation. The building didn't survive the sixties and is currently home to a mural and a bit of poetry, perhaps as a nod to the one-time separatist radical. "We Line up, life gets worn out, and worse without faith."
O Noir - where you can wear your sunglasses at night
That's Pauline and Mo from O Noir, a restaurant at Pierce and St. Catherine where you eat in 
the dark. Mo went to Con U, set up a fast food in La Cite, returned to Lebanon and just settled back here where he borrowed a European concept where a largely blind staff serve customers in the dark. So far it's been going great. Customers place their order at the entrance, with the charming Pauline, or another attendant. I haven't eaten there but have heard raves about the experience of eating in the dark.
Monday, January 22, 2007
John Underwood RIP
Underwood was a sociologist who moved to Calgary but returned due to a divorce situation and ended up as an electrician at the CNR shops at Leber in the Point. In 1989 his union boss Louis Laberge gave a speech threatening a general strike to force the repeal of a law allowing bilingual signs in Quebec stores. Underwood disagreed and led workers to wear an "A" for Anglo on their hard hats to protest against his own union's linguistic intolerance.
Laberge subsequently wrote Underwood: "John, your days of minority domination are over and instead of talking about democracy, accept to live under democratic rules and then, everything will be fine."
Underwood made sure plenty of others saw the letter. "I'm certainly not a product of any dominating elite," replied Underwood.
Underwood was also a fun and mischievous soul who penned many an amusing letter to the editor. He will be laid out at 5644 Bannantyne tomorrow (Tuesday) from 2 to 5 and 7 to 9, his service is at 11 am at St. Clements on Wellington, burial at Memorial Park (Near the Met and Decarie Circle) 1:30 Jan 24.
Chess champ's life tips
Chess champ Hajiyev Elshad, 36, visited 55 countries before he found the magic allure of Montreal too strong to resist. He bagged Quebec's fast-chess title soon after settling in here in 2005 and has been sharing his knowledge with others since. He's also an academic with a deep knowledge of existential philosophy and is working on a fascinating PhD thesis on where chess and philosophy converge. "In life, like chess, you have many possible moves at any time and if you make a bad one, things won't turn out well."Elshad is a name in Azerbaijan - whose flag he stands before at a local commemoration held yesterday of the Black January tragedy of 1990 in which Soviets killed defenseless Azeris holding a peaceful march - but he's convinced he did right coming here. He considers Montreal "a city of the future." "You get on the metro and see someone from Mexico smiling at someone from India as well as an African. In just one metro stop you can learn more about life than in years in many other countries. Seeing different people get along the way they do here is the dream of civilization." Hajiyev gives lessons to any and all comers at 337-8954 elshadh at mail . ru
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Cuba can have the rest of them, too
Two questions: how did the anonymous Montreal tourist ever uproot it from the sidewalk whence it came? And will they please take more of them? These sidewalk billboards have given us the creeps ever since cave men chucked tibias at them in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Chinatown institution burns to a crisp
This familiar three story greystone was nothing but smoking embers after yesterday. It stood proudly for a century at the NW corner of the Main and Lagauchetiere.Sun Hing grocery was its last occupant but it was home to Asian-oriented commerces only for a fraction of its time.
Its previous incarnation the Lodeo Cafe was shut down in 1985 by the Morality Squad because strippers and customers were sharing "sexual caresses."
From the mid-1950s it was the Rodeo Cafe where country acts like Slim Rogers performed. It became the Lodeo in the early 70s, a playful reference to the Chinese mispronunciation of Rodeo. Michel Tremblay's play Sainte Carmen de la Main (1976) was set in the country-setting of the Rodeo.
Its original occupants a century back was H. Singer Boots and Shoes which remained till WWII as the Singer Shoe Company. Singer moved directly across the street right after WWII and it then housed the Chung-Young Cafe and then the Wah-Nan cafe before its eventual run as the Rodeo/Lodeo.
It is said that Europeans, particularly Romanians, were the original owners of much of this area. Chinese bought in when those fortunes crashed during the depression, which is roughly when the current owners, the Wong family picked it up.
Tab Cola's nefarious campaign to regain market share
Tab ! Remember that diet soda once perched so pretty on grocery shelves? It tasted like a rusty penny. More accurately, it tasted like a rusty Steve Penney. It was Coke's initial diet soda baby back in 1963 but disappeared from Canada the year after Greg Joy cleared his famous bar, a moment long commemorated in the TV signoff national anthem following PK's Video hits. So 30 years after its disappearance Tab is back. Sorta.It's right there again on aisle eight, but re-engineered by the great minds of science as a Red Bull energy type ripoff.
The campaign to further enmesh you into sugarwater junkiedom to further enrichen Alcan's cannery operations was first waged in Spring 2006 but looks pretty new in these parts.
Here's a billboard for it.
Billboards. There's increasing speculation that these ads will be transformed into uber futurist installations, chameleon-customized for the needs of each passerby whose consumer profile will be projected via cell phone or embedded anal chip.
The big local three of billboardery at last count in 2003 has Astral (which started out as a measly photo concession for Miracle Mart) leading with about 1,000 large-o boards our fair island citye. Viacom (aka CBS Outdoor) has almost as many, plus about 2,300 bus shelter posters while Pattison rounds out the billboard triopoly with slightly fewer.
There were also about 30 rolling billboards in town which everybody wanted out, to the point of physically attacking them on the street and there was some bylaw rejiggery to get them outta Dodge.
But for the moment the ole-time semi-bucolic road ads are still simple enough and are playing the feel-good throwback nostalgy angle which might make you feel warm'n'fuzzy enough to split open that wallet wide.
Saturday, January 20, 2007
Oaklands, the Bronfman mansion...is it really 4 rent?
Sam Bronfman learned early of the cash in booze and came to Montreal to export the sauce to dry provinces and onwards into the USA. Good moolah in that.So when he moved to Montreal from Manitoba in 1924 he shacked up at 359 Roslyn. In 1928 he merged his op with Seagrams and around that same time moved into this big-bottomed 1906-built 15,000 square foot home originally built for dry-goods importer George Sumner, at 15 Belvedere. Sam lounged there until his death in 1971. He and his wife Saidye (who died in 1995 age 98) enjoyed the typical billionaire's life at this little shack, pretentiously known as Oaklands, where they raised their four children: Aileen "Minda" Bronfman de Gunzburg (1925-1986), Phyillis Lambert, long known as Canada's richest woman, who becomes an octogenarian on Wednesday and Edgar 77, and Charles 74.
Last year Stephen Bronfman who bought the place in 2001 worried heritage nerdlingers with his proposed renos overseen by Architem-Wollf Shapiro Kuskowski who were last seen pondering new water features and newfangled energy-conservation gimmickry.
Stephen B reassured the worrywarts in that reassuring way that billionaires reassure people. He was simply demolishing a small adjacent building. So now it is said that you can call Oaklands your humble home. I have been told by someone who should know that it's currently for rent, although I also read in an older article that Stephen Bronfman vows to stay and raise his kid Sam there. So who knows what the truth is.
No I don't know how much they're asking to sign a lease, but probably more than $300 a month. Ask me for a reference, I always give great references. It's a bit simple for my tastes so I'll pass. But it appears uninhabited during these reno times so a person of lesser means, such as yourself, might consider sneaking in and squatting there. But you'll have to make a deal with the security guard at the little booth in the front who doesn't miss much. Bring him a big plate of fish and rice or something. That might work.
Antiques: Like Money in the Bank
And if you want to find genuine Deruta, go ask Hélène Holden, owner of the self-titled Hélène Holden Antiquités (2691 Notre-Dame West, 514-989-9542). She has a real-deal set in stock, so you can forget the knock-offs.
And while you're at it, check out her other fine glassware and china -- just leave any cattle you have outside. That oak Chippendale table in the window is for sale, by the way. And there's this circa-1810 set of Regency chairs lined up in such a way that I thought I might lie down and take a nap right there but, alas, spontaneous napping remains out of style.
While other owners' shops have been closing down or moving on, Hélène is one of the most steadfast holdouts on Antique Alley. And her philosophy is simple:
"Antiques are like money in the bank. You buy it. It's unique. It's beautiful. You use it. You abuse it. It still gains in value. And years later, you sell it and make a profit.
"Some of them you have to hold a long time. Others you can do quickly. I bought a painting in 1961. My daughter sold it and she did very well with it.
"I like to tell people, 'Buy them and keep them for a few years.'
"When I divorced my first husband (lawyer-cum-politician Richard Holden), I remember selling my dining-room table. I bought it for a hundred dollars, put it upside-down on top of the station wagon and brought it home like that. I sold it for a thousand dollars about 13 years later."
Friday, January 19, 2007
Coffee time on Notre Dame
There are three steps to making the best coffee in Montreal, according to Patrick Hébert (in the photo).
"First there's the blend," says the 24-year-old owner of Lili & Oli in the blossoming theater district of Little Burgundy.
His unique combination of three kinds of coffee roasts is a closely-held secret.
"Second, it's the right machine -- which isn't luck. Older and bigger is better, with good water pressure. I'll take manual over button-pressing. It adds not just to the coffee but also the ambiance.
"Third, you need a lot of practice to work the machine."
That's it for me. Coffee time
New Play about 50s Mtl starts 2nite
A new play set in '50s Montreal starts tonight at The Theatre St. Catherine. I bumped into Renee Amber, one of the stars last night at Else's who was sipping tea with the rest of the cast.
The play tells of two young women who come from Calgary and realize that life as a cabaret girl in Montreal ain't all that spectacular after all.
It's called Le Gros Spectacle - A Cabaret Fairy-Tale set in Sizzling 1950s Montreal. It's on from tonight until February 3, featuring the delicious Renee Amber and Brieanna Moench. Tix $15, less for the cardigan sweater agers.
It's a little autobiographical. Renee Amber grew up in Calgary but her parents owned a building near St. Catherine and the Main. It was somewhat derelict in later years. She came here to Montreal and transformed it into a
beautiful theatre as you can see from the small photo here.
The play makes some reference to legendary journalist Al Palmer. If you've never heard of Al Palmer, I'm posting a rather absurd nightclub column Palmer wrote way back in the day.It deals with the Peppermint Lounge, which my father co-owned. I'll tell the shocking story another time.Clean-Up
By Al Palmer
The Gazette Thursday January 11, 1962
Twist Plus Director Robert Get `Lower Main' Credit
"The Twist is helping clean up the Lower Main," according to Solly Silver, who brought the thing here in the first place. Talking over the blare of his brass-heavy band. "Mister Twister" noted the mink-coated socialites from the west end dotted around the tables and said: "People like those are changing the face of the Main. None of them ever came down here before the Twist – now they're here every night. The whole atmosphere of the street is changing."
Also sharing credit for changing the face of the notorious strip of St. Lawrence Blvd., is Police Director J. Adrien Robert's "get tough" policy which saw constables patrolling in pairs and the relentless efforts of the newly-created Social Security (SS) Squad.
Silver, just back from judging a Twist contest in Miami Beach, quoted no less an authority than U.S. President John F. Kennedy as lauding the physical benefits derived from the pretzel-like form of terpsichorean madness. "President Kennedy," said Silver, "said the answer to getting more men of military age in physical shape is such physically demanding and, enjoyable athletics. The Twist fits that perfectly.
"It reduces their waistline and helps get rid of the blubber. It makes athletes out of the young and old and, besides, it helps cure social ills. "How can anyone plan crimes while they're doing the Twist? They're too busy."
Asked about the Twist contest at the Deauville Hotel, Miami Beach, which he was invited to judge, Silver said, "It was a contest between about 60 kids from six to 12 years of age. It was difficult to pick a winner because all kids are beautiful I told the hotel to give all the kids first prize and then came back to Montreal."
He said the craze is having its effect in Florida. "Time was when people just sat in the sun or played cards in the lobby. Now they're Twisting all over the states."
Silver doesn't see an immediate end to craze. "It does people good, so it will last a long time."
That should be welcome news to the Lower Main."
Carlo Calvi on the trial of the century
Carlo Calvi moved to Montreal from Italy via the Bahamas and Edmonton over 20 years back, mainly to be near his accountant, the now famous Bruce Vercheres. Calvi sought a quieter life in Canada after being trailed by bodyguards everywhere in Italy.Calvi has been fighting non-stop for justice for his father, Roberto Calvi, known as God's Banker, because he did the books for the Pope.
Robert Calvi was tossed off a bridge in London England in 1982. Calvi Senior was an innocent victim of a crossfire between the old papal guard reacting against the ascendancy of the JPII's favoured Opus Dei. Carlo was always easy to reach and happy to talk at length about the affair.
Last year was a huge year for him as Mafia boss Pippo Calo; businessmen Flavio Carboni and Ernesto Diotallevi; Manuela Kleinszig, Carboni's ex-girlfriend; and bodyguard Silvano Vittor, Calvi's bodyguard were put on trial for the murder.
Suddenly everybody in the world wanted to interview Calvi about these new developments but Calvi was uncharacteristically unreachable. He did two interviews with NBC Dateline but ducked just about everybody else. I was getting a ton of calls from journalists hoping I could help track him down.
Turns out that 2006 was a huge year for Calvi who spent much time at the trial in Italy. His mother died, he got divorced and he moved out of his large Outremont home to smaller digs on the Plateau. Yesterday he recounted me the state-of-affairs about this stependously large trial.
Calvi says the outcome is unpredictable but the process is shedding light on one of the most intriguing mysteries going.
These trials in Italy are not like the trials we have here where they last maybe sometime a few weeks or months. This trial started in October 2005 so they are in their second year over there it's very normal. I was listening to the proceedings on the internet and one of the lawyers was saying, "if we go on like this we'll never finish the trial." It's incredibly long. Add that to the fact that they're doing it in a maximum security prison out of town. By car, it took well over an hour to get to and it's completely isolated. It's a residential area but inside a prison in a bunker. So that means it's mostly covered locally in some of the regional media. Some hearings are pretty long because the way the Italians do the cross examination is quite a bit less effective. If you've been in court in the UK they're very good at cross examination and keep attention of the public but Italians tend to be very extensive in their questioning. Even when I was testifying I knew the judges were following but I had to see if the jury was following, it can go on for an excruciating amount of time.
It has led to a massive amount of new material and my goal is to build a database and see what I can do after that. So it's extremely useful but in terms of the outcome I don't know.
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Winter surfin' in the Griff...
How do you move a surfboard in the middle of winter? Go ask Alex -- he zoomed across town with his. Seen at the corner of Notre Dame and Mountain at noon today.
Pomegranate juice fever !
I penned an upcoming piece for my friend David Price's feisty little Vivva newspaper about a topic which cannot be revealed prior to publication although it may or may not have to do with the craze for pomegranate juice which has swept the city.
Nasser Akhavan of Marche Akhavan imports and packages his own brand, which I've tried and enjoy.
Chris Hills (wearing the plaid shirt) manager of A Votre Sante on Sherbrooke just West of Claremont also says it's a big draw. Check out both shops, there's a load of unique items in both places.
Bashir Lazar, quickie drama review
$23.75 will get you into the Theatre Aujourdh'hui, a smallish theatre at 3900 St. Denis to see Bashir Lazar, a French-language one-man play - acted excellently by Denis Gravereaux. It tells of an Algerian immigrant who loses his family to fire and then comes here, fakes teaching credentials and becomes a passionate and committed substitute teacher. However some of his methods are misconstrued by the bureaucrats, which leads to some conflict. The play is written by the ever-prolific Évelyne de la Chenelière and only weighs in at 70 minutes. My visit was followed by a Q&A (with wine) and the hosts seemed to want to explore the immigration question. It's a solid, well-constructed play with a flaw or two - for example - it seems slightly unbelievable that this guy would get a job teaching grade six without any papers or even a CV. He seems implausibly psychologically intact considering his entire family had perished in flames. Yet it's a thought-provoking and well-produced play nonetheless.
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
City parking nazis kill grassroots community sharing
When those newfangled parking meters became a part of Montreal's new sidewalkscape, many kindhearted citizens developed a charitable habit of leaving their used receipts in a little slot at the top of the meter.The idea was to extend a favour to an unseen recipient that would be next in the spot, who could use the minutes that person had already paid for but hadn't used.
I'm told that sharing with people you'll never meet is the sort of thing that gets you into heaven through the big front door.
So what did the city parking authorities do when they saw Montrealers doing this?
They installed specially-designed plates to block this little slot, this making the practice considerably more difficult. Next time you see one of these babies, you'll notice the slot has been eradicated.
Pretty incredible to think that went to all that trouble.
(Photo and idea and good eye at the plate by JD Gravenor)
Syonara redbrick apartments at Mountain and Notre Dame
This noble and distinguished 21-unit redbrick Griffintown apartment building has sat at Mountain and Notre Dame (SE corner) since 1954.Its predecessor was something called McCord Bowling, named after a little street that once stood just to the east. A wrecking ball recreated the bowling action on that bowling hall.
This building is among the structures slated for demolition in order to accommodate the very large upcoming ÉTS student residence. Current residents have a few weeks to scoot. They will be frogmarched out and shot at dawn. Maybe.
In addition to about 400 beds, the new building will feature a Metro supermarket. The grocers are bankrolling a major part of the construction, which should keep costs down for the university, which is affiliated with Universite du Quebec (and not UQAM). (Thanks to JD Gravenor for the photo and tip).
Bicycle Bob update.
Longtime Montreal activist icon Robert Silverman, aka Bicycle Bob, 73, has been uncharacteristically quiet lately.
That’s because he moved from his downtown co-op in Montreal to a condo in Val David.
“I was with a woman and we had this crazy plan to live in Europe for eight months and rural Quebec for four. We ended up breaking up after three months in Spain. Now I’ve been out here for two and a half years and I like it with some reservations. I left Montreal because of the pollution, there’s more cars, it’s dangerous and it smells all the time.”
Silverman lives in an artist colony, with all French neighbours. He has gifted them. “I did something else something I’m very delighted with and even proud of. I stuck up a volleyball net where I live and to my great pleasure more and more people came, people in their 60s or their 70s, most who have never touched a ball in their lives. Before the cold came they’d play in my back yard. My theory is that volleyball is a gift of god but only some people understand that, people don't pass the ball all the time. You can’t get the ball unless you pass it to others, like Jesus said.”
He’s also thrilled with the newly-unveiled train line to St. Jerome, which goes right to a bike path of 240 kilometers, all the way up to Mont Laurier. It’s one of North America’s biggest.
He tries to visit Montreal for the Velorution critical mass bike ride on the last Friday of every month. “They get big crowds, sometimes 800 people, even a lot show up during the cold months.”
Among his other ongoing crusades:
-He's lobbying to make sure that when the volleyball courts on Park Avenue get moved up towards the baseball fields, that they return to mostly six-on-six on grass rather than two-on-two on sand.
-He’s still fighting the Israeli occupation of Palestine and is working with Abraham Wiseman in a new group called the Alliance of Concerned Jewish Canadians. It’s a Jewish group that wants to be affiliated with the Canadian Jewish Congress. “So far they’ve refused us, saying that we’re against the Jews. We’ve been informed that we can’t join and yet we’re Jewish.”
-He’s still involved in correcting eyesight through exercises of the muscles near the eyeball, concentrating now on teaching a simple exercise which could diminish the need for reading glasses with age.
-He’s still involved in promoting bike paths, noting that the Mountain Equipment Co-op in Marche Central recently led a rally demanding that the city continue the bike path north of the tracks, from Rosemount to the Back River. “That’s the first time that a private store has organized a demonstration for bike paths.”
Montreal pharmacy - warm without doors
You can leave your front door wide open today and your home will still be nice and toasty comme un roti. The trick is in applying the Swiss secret to controlling the flow of warm air flow and that secret appears to have been lost.
But such a system was in place at the Montreal Pharmacy at 916 St. Catherine East.
Duqette's pharmacist father told him that druggists were robbing customers blind, so Duquette slashed prices and offered specials: buy $7 worth of goods, get a free pound of butter, or something else from the store. Jealous rivals sued. He fought 22 lawsuits in 1938 and won 'em all.
The drug store remained open 24 hours a day and made deliveries day and night within a 25 kilometer perimeter.
The store was always open so it had no lock on its doors. In the 1940s Duquette added automatic doors. In 1958 his son Jean-Paul Duquet (spelled differently due to a birth certificate cock-up) visited a store in Zurich that had no doors, yet remained warm. He had the same system installed at the pharmacy in 1958.
We have no other details of how that system worked. I'm guessing that it involved cantilevers.
During those years the pharmacy was jumping with visitors, ranging from gangsters like the Cotronis to dignitaries like Mayour Houde. Star-gazing customers of the Bellevue Casino would walk through the doors...err..the entrance and buy expensive perfume for their favourite dancers. The girls would often return them for a discounted price and the store would sell the bottle anew.
At its peak, the Montreal Pharmacy employed 175 and had a whopping 57 delivery cars. The joint even hired students to offer tourists a guided tour of the five-floor pharmacy. Duquette died of lung cancer in 1966 and his son took over. In 1973 the store became the sixth Jean Coutu pharmacy and its first franchise. For the first time since it opened 50 years earlier, the pharmacy locked its doors at night. Duquette sold the store to Jean Coutu in 1985 and the building to someone else.
(Source: Sonia Sarfati's article in La Presse "Once Upon a Time in the East," June 26, 1992)
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Lousy depanneur to be demolished
Remember Do the Right Thing? It involved an Italian-run neighbourhood pizzeria in Brooklyn that refused to put up a photo of a black icon to please some of its mostly-black clientele.
The pizzeria thought it had the right to do what it wanted.
The clients believed that the pizzeria, due to its de facto monopoly on nearby commerce, ought to honor its customers at least a little.
Since 1982 the depanneur owner at the northwest corner of Girouard and St. James has been making like that pizzeria.He forces customers to ring a doorbell to enter. He puts forbidding metal shutters over his windows at night and reputedly asks for
$10 to call a taxi for you.These antics have made him the target of complaints to the city councillor on more than one occasion. I know this because I complained to the city councillor about him on more than on occasion.
This store and the entire building - along with the hideous billboard that sits awkwardly on the side - may soon be no more.
The neighbouring J.E. Hanger (click for ridiculously mistake-laden website) bought the triplex where he rents his premises. Mr. Depanneur Owner - whose name I don't know, but he's a bespectacled east Indian-looking guy in his mid-40s with short black spiky, tremendously gelled hair - tried to buy it himself for over a decade, he claims.
Weird depanneur guy says he offered a half million to buy the triplex but the woman selling wanted more and indeed she got her price. He claims that the owner eventually sold the triplex for nearly one million. I assume he means Canadian dollars, not Argentinian pesos. Nearly a mil for that building seems highly farfetched but I haven't had time to research and disprove it.
J.E. Hanger, which makes prostheses for cripples, (we can make a cripple walk but still no cure for penis breath) wants to demolish the triplex and another duplex between - which it also now owns - to expand its operations. Hanger is banking that the superhospital will bring more business to the area. The borough of NDG is accepting briefs on whether or not the demolition permit should be approved or not, the final deadline is January 26.
Usually I'm against demolition, but in this case I hope this lamentably misanthropic and meanspirited bad citizen of the corner store world tumbles like a piggy's twig house against a wolf's windy aggression.
Smokin' makes you impervious to cold..here's proof.
Spotted in Lower NDG this morning. Guy on his balcony wearing nothing but an old housecoat. It was 13 degrees below zero celcius at the time.
The bloom is off the rose
Back in 1975 Rene Simard was still four foot ten and was trying out livin' in Los Angeles tryin' to break into the US market. Sad considering that in retrospect he was getting very badly treated, as was his sister.
State of Montreal discos 1970
Read on to find out more
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They used to call Montreal the Paris of North America – the city that offered the best nightlife on the continent.
Much of that image is gone – or at least faded. Most of the big, brassy glittering clubs have closed, undermined by the trend to smaller, more intimate rooms, and, of course, television.
But there’s still one aspect of Montreal entertainment that doesn’t take a back seat to any other city’s.
Our discotheques rank among the best in the world. They offer the standard disco image – the loud, freaky, colour-spattered, mind bending environment – but there’s an extra ingredient that sets them apart. That catalyst is the unique cultural background of the city, the European heritage that has opened to Montreal a whole new world of entertainment that can’t be found anywhere else on the continent.
Yes it's the same force that gave Montreal the Paris of North America image, and it’s surviving in discotheques.
I toured nine of the city’s best last week with the city’s top expert in the field, Alfie Wade, 37, man of incredible energy and numberless friends. Everywhere we went- and even between places – people would wave at him or rush up and shake his hand.
Most of Alfie’s reputation was built from one of the clubs we visited, the Vieux Rafiot, which he managed until recently. He’s one of the new breed of disco owners, the personality who attracts people as much as the place itself. The Vieux Rafiot, in fact, is still known as "Alfie’s" to many Montrealers.
(Actually he’s in the process of building a new club, that’s another story).
He points out that Montreal discos have been more stable than those in New York, where the focus of attention seems to change so quickly that a place that’s crowded one weekend is literally empty the next. "People here aren’t so fickle,” he said as we charged through the humid night in his mustang convertible. “here the situation is more stable because the clubs are good, the crowds controlled – most places are jacket and tie, you know – the people who run them are polite and the regular customers are treated with the extra respect they deserve."
Montreal’s discotheques – and the city’s pretty girls who are found therein – even rated a feature story in a recent issue of playboy magazine, which bears out the theory that our entertainment centre tag isn’t dead yet.
Alfie stumbled into the disco business in 1966 after a five-year stay in New York City, where he played jazz piano and worked in a recording studio with the likes of Phil Spector, who produced the latest Beatles’ album.
Shortly after he returned to Montreal in 1966, he met some friend on the street who asked him if he’d like to run their new club, Le Drug. It was that simple The next year he took over the Vieux Rafiot and last year his reputation carried him to Las Vegas, where he redesigned the Sky Room of the Desert Inn – one of Howard Hughes’ many hotels – into a disco-club.
Alfie showed me around what he considered the best places because of a fierce pride he- and other discotheque owners – feel about what they have to offer. “A lot of people have worked very hard to put these places together, and we have a bond between us. We’re in competition more or less, but we’re also in the same business and friends.”
So, with Alfie, I visited some very fine discotheques. But before we start; a word on dress. The basic rule is tie and jacket, no jeans. But if you’re one of Montreal's magnificent dressers – the young French Canadian is probably the best casual dresser in the world, as we English are so enviously aware – you’ll be more than welcome without eh tie business.
(That applies, actually, to all places but the Laugh-In, where the number of musicians among the clientele makes a dress rule impossible.)
The only guideline, then is to be fashionably hip, or if that’s not on your thing, fashionably square.
So here’s a guide to Montreal’s best discotheques. Some undoubtedly have been left out, but these certainly are among the cream.
Whisky a Go-Go Right in the heart of downtown Montreal, the Whisky is a downstairs off-shoot of the always Рpacked Chez Bourgetel sidewalk caf̩-bar at the corner of Mountain St. and de Maisonneuve Blvd.
It’s a long, white room with a bar at one end and features large circles ands square of brightly colored lights in the walls that pulsate with the music. The whiteness of the tables, chairs and walls give the room a different effect, an almost bright look.
The crowd is mostly young, and the music, while not too loud, is very much up-to-date rock and rhythm and blues. Seating capacity – on low, square, white backless chairs – is, 158.
Reservations are needed on weekends call Mario at 848-8826.
Laugh-In The discotheque tag doesn’t really apply to the Laugh-in, unless you use that new dance step they’re talking about now. It involves going to the middle of the dance floor sitting down and listening to the music.
At 2077 Victoria Street, (the downtown one, behind Eaton’s) it’s a place to listen to good, loud, primarily Canadian rock bands in that easy disco atmosphere.
It’s been open since October, 1968 and already has a reputation among visiting musicians as the place they’ll be most welcome on their own terms. In recent months patrons have been surprised with guest sets by Johnny Winter, The Doors and Steppenwolf, among others.
The crowd is basically young and casual, the decor is very plain and a little shabby, but it’s a music place more than anything. And it’s loud. You can talk between sets - records fill the gap - but now without trying hard at it, and when the band is on, forget it.
Because of the live-band policy, the Laugh-In charges a weekend admission, but it’s only a dollar. Prices of drinks are lower – 70 cents for a beer, $1.30 - $1.50 for liquor and $1.75 for manger Tom Hansen’s “special” a vicious thing made from vodka, grenadine, sugar, cherry brand and orange and lemon juice. Tom insists it’s “great.” I didn’t have the strength to try it.
The Laugh-In has a capacity of 160, and half the crowd is usually made up of musicians or people associated with music.
George’s A heavyweight, George’s is probably the most popular place in town right now, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to give up its top rung.
It’s at 2060 Aylmer St. just down from Sherbrooke St. and features and excellent Montreal rock band, Still-Life, who play everything from hard rock to ballads.
Much of the secret of the success of George’s stems from its attraction to Montreal’s more affluent swingers of every age from 21 to 50. You’re just as likely to meet your doctor or a business executive – decked out in the latest fashions – as you are to meet a college kid from down the street.
George’s treads the fine line between the hard, heavy, sock-it-to-‘em discotheque and the adult type. The music is loud, but the type of people who you’d normally think would be turned off by it just eat it up.
The room is comfortably appointed in red plastic and black and holds 150 people. But the low ceiling and the way it curls around the stage give it an intimae atmosphere unusual in a club so large.
They’ll take reservations on the weekend for fairly small parties – six or seven at the outside – but only will hold them ‘til 9:30. You see, filling the place isn’t one of George’s problems.
Le Tarot Here’s a wild one. Le Tarot, at 1459 St. Alexandre St. at the corner of Mayer St. near the main downtown area, features what is probably the best permanent light show in town.
It’s a psychedelic, freak-out club in the best sense. The music is loud, raunchy rock, there’s a large dance floor with an overhead strobe light, a screen behind the stage catches colorful slide projections that melt together and burst apart in riots of colour while a multi-faceted mirror-globe over the dance floor sends spots of colored light racing around the room.
And that’s only the main stage. There’s another small "peace pad"at the other end of he room with slowing slow-moving blobs of colour filling most of one wall.
Le Tarot – it’s named after the tarot fortune-telling cards – is not a disco for the faint of heart. The action there is fast and furious, the music loud. The crowd is young and they swing.
It’s one of the bigger discos in town – it seats more than 250 and goes off in all directions. A boon, since things get frantic on the weekend, is an air conditioning system.
All that is not to say people over 25 won’t enjoy themselves. If you’ve never seen a light show, it alone is worth the visit.
Le Crash At 1473 Dorchester Boulevard West, at the corner of Mackay St. Le Crash is another spot not for the faint of heart.
To start with you’ll recognize it quickly by the half of a car on the wall outside then when you get inside you’ll find bits and pieces of cars all over.
There’s another car’s shell over the bar, the walls are decorated with flashing tail lights and the tables are round pieces of glass supported by steering wheels and columns.
Le Crash features a metal dance floor and two- count ‘em – full fledged strobe lights. If you’re not familiar with strobes, they’re the flashing, powerful lights that make dancer look like actors in a 1920s movie. It’s also not for the faint of eyesight.
The music is the latest from the pop groups – Led Zeppelin, Chicago et al. and it’s loud. The crowd is primarily young, but everyone’s welcome, there’s no cliquish atmosphere, although here, as at many discos, there are a large number of regulars.
The prices are in line with other discos - $1.20 for beer, $1.50 for liquor and $1.75-2$ for mixed drinks.
The Influence, another good Montreal group, play there Sunday night through Tuesday
Reservations are needed on the weekend for larger groups. Call 932-9094
Harlow Another downtown spot, Harlow is on the North side of de Maisonneuve Blvd, between Mountain and Drummond Strs.
The room has been through a number of changes in the past few years but the present owner, Gaetan Duval – former manager of the Whiskey a Go-Go- seems to have hit on the formula for success.
That formula is to present a low-key discotheque aimed directly at the older market – that’s 25 and up. Harlow is a place where dancing and the music are important, but creature comforts come first.
The music is low-key, ranging from light rock to Tom Jones – with an occasional incursion into heavier rock – and the atmosphere pleasant. There’s a largish dance floor love seats around the walls and a small side-room with padded benches and cushions.
Conversation is a protected commodity at Harlow. The music is there, but doesn’t dominate, the room is comfortable and the people are there for the same reason you are - to have a good time without intruding.
Harlow is big with a capacity of more than 300 people and stays open until 3 a.m. prices are standard : $1 for beer, $1.50 for liquor
Le Vieux Rafiot Le Vieux Rafiot – the old boat, or barge, in seaman’s slang- is in the heart of old Montreal at 406 St. Sulpice St. at the corner of St. Paul the easiest way to get there from downtown is down McGill, left on Notre Dame and right at Notre Dame church at Place D’armes.
The building itself has a colourful past. During the 1600s it was the home of Pierre Lemoyne, Sieur d’Iberville, among other things the first governor of Louisiana.
But times have changed. The Vieux Rafiot is in the basement of the old, stone building, and features a marine motif. The bar is actually an old lifeboat, and the stone walls and tables are decorated with charts, life rings and the like.
It seats 104 people, and like most of the discos, doesn’t have a cover or admission charge. The audience is mostly younger, around 25 and the music is quite loud and primarily rhythm and blues and danceable – James Brown, Motown and like that. They also claim the best collection of Latin records in town.
The prices are standard - $1 for a beer, $1.50 for liquor and more for mixed drinks.
It has a warm, happy atmosphere and someone’s likely to pick up a tambourine and add a little live music to the records.
Weekends and warm summer nights you’ll need a reservation. Call Jimmy at 842-0807.
Le Marquis de Sade This one’s just around the corner from le Vieux Rafiot, at 36 St. Paul St. East and it’s a beauty.
The entrance is via speak-easy door – ring the buzzer- but then the atmosphere changes. Inside you’re greeted by a waiter in an elegant velvet-brocaded uniform, chandeliers, some velvet – covered love set and sofas and an impression you’re in a salon rather than a disco.
The atmosphere is one of restrained elegance, not an easy target to aim for in designing a discotheque, but one Le Marquis de Sade has achieved. Even the tiny lights over the dance floor carry it out. They pulse with the music like a strobe light, but they’re so small the effect is more like twinkling stars
The music is low in volume, and mostly European – Charles Aznavour, and Mireille Mathieu are favorites – and very low key. It’s not a place where you’ll freak out, so steer clear if that’s your thing.
But if you want a relaxed, elegant atmosphere and a real taste of Montreal’s cosmopolitan atmosphere, le Marquis de Sade is your kind of place. And if you’ve been finding it hard to explain our city’s special atmosphere to out-of-towners, take them here, they’ll understand
The room holds 156 people and is aimed at the older audience, which in disco country means over 25. The prices are slightly higher - $1.75 for liquor, $2 for mixed drinks –and you should dress for the occasion.
It operates on a first-come-first-served basis on weekends.
Plexi Plexi is also in old Montreal in the hotel Iroquois at 454 Place Jacques Cartier (which incidentally features an all-night floor display and shop) near City Hall.
Plastic is used extensively in the decor of the large, square room, most of it in the form of a stalactites hanging from the roof. Two features of the design are the music – pulsed lighted stalactites over the dance floor – itself bottom –lighted – and the glass in the bar contains a sandwich of mercury which slithers around at the slightest provocation.
The music is a combination of French and English rock and ballads played at a medium volume – you can talk without straining anything seriously – and attracts a crowd of all ages.
Since it's in a hotel, Plexi has a cabaret license and stays open to 3 a.m, an hour longer than most discos. Prices range from $1.25 for beer to $1.60 for liquor to $2 for cocktails and mixed rinks.
Plexi is probably more than anything a nice discotheque. It offers the best of decor, but on a level that doesn’t rush out and grab you and offers the best of dancing music, again at a level that won't bowl you over
You’ll need reservations on the weekend. Call 866-4065
Monday, January 15, 2007
The Bellevue Casino - watch it bounce
The Bellevue Casino stood at Bleury and Ontario (now Prez Kennedy). That's where my parents first got to know one another. It was known as a nice place, a cheaper alternative than other swankier joints. It's been demolished since, naturellement. My mom had moved here from Winnipeg and was living at Guy and Sherbrooke and working in an office job at a Steinbergs in the East End, the sort of place you have to take seven buses to get to. In the evening she worked taking souvenir photographs and selling them to customers. She'd shoot the photos, dash the film up to the darkroom and return about 15 minutes later with the photographic glory. My father owned the business. In fact he had a similar concession at the Kon Tiki restaurant until the late 70s. I wonder where all those photographs went? I wonder if anybody bothered taking photos of Trixie's Watch it Bounce routine, or the Wong Sisters doing their Chinese Dancing Dolls bit. If I come across a time machine, I'll head back to 1952, plop down my five bucks and check it all out.
More wacky crime from Quebec
I feel the same way about poutine In early May 2006 a man six feet tall, 180 pounds with brown hair walked into a small restaurant in Levis, near Quebec City and ordered a poutine. He took a bite. Then another. He then stopped abruptly. Without a word he threw the poutine toward the counter then grabbed anything he could find lying around and smashed it against the wall. He dashed towards the waitress and grabbed her brutally by the throat. The owner came out to defend the girl but the customer literally tore the owner’s clothing off his back. The man ran out and took off in a lime coloured Ford Tempo or Mercury Topaz. He didn’t pay for his poutine.
Better late than early In May 2006 four thieves robbed a place in l’Ange Gardien and stashed their haul nearby for a later pickup. Management reported the theft at 4 p.m. but police only arrived six hours later, at 10 p.m. to take a report. At the same moment the crooks were returning in an SUV and two other cars to pick up the stashed loot. The police noticed the convoy and a pursuit began. The thieves ran into the woods, and were chased by the police who finally arrested the men, 26, 18, 18 and 23. They all live in Thurso.
A firm handshake can be an overrated thing On 21 February 2006 lawyer Guilaine Guathier was in court making a case against the competence of a fellow
lawyer Patrick Richard at a disciplinary committee of the Bar. Richard wasn’t having a picnic. When the day ended, Richard met Gauthier in the hallway and shook her hand. Vigorously. So much so that he violently shook her arm and squeezed her finger. Her arm was broken in two places. She laid a lawsuit against him for $75,0000.A sentimental homecoming Marie France Julien, 32, of Cap-Sante dropped by her 68 year old father and stabbed him repeatedly in the face and upper body on 22 November 2005 at 11 p.m. He required 61 stitches. She got two years less a day.
Declare your drug earnings
Carl Savard, 40, of St. Catherine de la Jacques Cartier was part of a drug network brought down by Operation Piranha. He also had a car dealership and declared $31,000 a year in income tax. Cops seized his house and furniture and other belongings. In April 2006 Revenue Quebec decided that he still owed them $350,000 in back taxes on his drug profits.
Watch out for wheelchair pedophiles Roger Martin, 56, of Sherbrooke sexually molested at least eight young boys between three and 12 years of age between at least 1978 and 2003, all from his wheelchair. He did the works, fellatio, touching and masturbation. He befriended their parents with a folksy “mon oncle” persona. One family built a ramp so he could access their pool area better in his wheelchair. He was given four years in prison. His lawyer argued for a shorter sentence because prisons aren’t wheelchair friendly.
Where to go when you get booted from the bash On 10 December 2005 Pierre Luc Hamel, 19, of Val Belaire was thrown out of a party for being too drunk and coked up. So to fill in the sudden hole in his social calendar, he called on two young friends to help him rob an old timer who he knew. The three went into the home of Albert Legare, 79, and beat him with a two by four. They searchd for what they thought would be a big score of hoarded cash. One of the kids stood in the bedroom hitting the old timer with a stick while the other two searched the joint. The trio emerged with a bit of change and a bottle of rum. The old timer managed to call 911 after they left. He could not return to his home and was instead moved into an old age home.
The Jewish Studies masturbator on the run On Tuesday February 14, 2006 an East Asian Studies professor returning to her office on McTavish at 5;30 p.m. hear a knock on the window of the Jewish Studies building, which she was passing. They say a “totally naked man knocking with one hand and masturbating with the other.” He was a “white male, mid thirties with reddish-blonde hair and a receding hairline.” He had fled by the time the police arrived. On February 17 a man with the same description was found hiding on the first-floor conference room of the Jewish Studies building, but he got away.
The telltale twitch Hesham Khadr was a cash machine repairman who went to switch the ribbon on the CIBC machine on De La Savane in Gatineau on June 30 2004. He finished the job anad left. Thirty minutes later a guy came in wearing a mask and took off with $51,000 (the bank claimed it was $76,000). Cops compared the gestures of the two on the security camera and concluded that it was the same person. In May 2006 Khadr was sentenced to 140 hours of community service. He had no prior criminal record.
Preschoolers – a ripe target for ripoff Claude Harvey, 41, of Gatineau plead guilty of defrauding the preschool he had managed since 1989 of $220,000 which he used for his gambling debts between October 1999 and January 2004. He wrote 190 fake cheques. He was sentenced to 240 hours of community service. An insurance company will cover most of the lost cash. Harvey was forced into therapy for his addiction and has become a landscaper.
Drug make chix rob banks Bernadette Lapensee robbed four banks in the Outaouais between 25 August and 3 September 2005. She was a major drug addict and totally reformed after going into detox. She was sentenced in May 2006.
She really didn’t want to get strip searched Emilie Laliberte, 18, was caught trying to bring 27 grams of hashish into Donnaconna prison. When the guards indicated that they would be searching her prior to going inside to visit. She confessed before they even started. She had just visited her boyfriend Francois Migneault, 24, who is known to the police among others. They found 38 more grams of hash at her house, worth $5,000 in inflated prison markets. Nancy Gilbert, 38, and Joel Dubois, 29 of Chicoutimi were also implicated.
He needs a mechanic In Gatineau on 7 September 2004 Danny Bissonnette, 25, was driving his modified car which featured no lights, no odometer, tires of difference sizes, no muffler and no brakes. He crashed into Lisa Clavet’s car on the Draveurs Bridge. On trial last year he was entirely unrepentant, denying all blame. He was given six months in prison and denied the right to drive for eight months.
Testosterone and empty pockets – a lethal mix Eric Champagne of Ste-Cecile-de-Milton hung around a store in Sherbrooke for half an hour waiting to be alone with the young cashier Marie-Pierre Daigle. He then robbed her and put a knife to her throat when another customer came in, leading Champagne to flee. Forty minutes later he went to a Petro-Can in Orford where a 25-year-old cashier pushed the panic button when he asked for the cash. Magog police got there just in time to see Champagne ripped her clothes off in the bathroom. The cops broke down the door. Champagne tried to flee but was caught. This was in May 2006.
Set the clink ablaze A woman in Hull, 44, was arrested for driving in a stolen car at 1 a.m.. Her license had been temporarily suspended as well. So cops brought her into the clink overnight. She objected to this and set the place on fire with a concealed lighter. She faced a judge on March 1 2006.
Ronald McDonald was not a suspect A young man, 21, claimed to have been sexually assaulted b three men at the McDonald’s on Talbot and Universite in Saguenay. There was touching involved. Cops were skeptical until they received a similar complained in the same evening.
Saturday, January 13, 2007
Awful tales from the East End
And by this town, I mean the area known as Ste Marie, think about around Parthenais and Demaisonneuve.
Hang around there for a while, and you'll quickly learn that when you mention the Blanchard name -- the clan from the Gaspe -- many-a-door swings open. The same way that doors would nervously swing open for the Dubios family in St. Henri -- doors that opened before they were even knocked
In Ste. Marie, girls as young as 13 are weaned onto a diet of drugs. Before long, they work the streets.
And while having a city job might be some people's idea of a ticket out of the hood, it doesn't always work out that way. At least one unnamed university student found out. At one particular summer party she attended, a member of the local elite slipped her some drugs and the boys had their way with her unawares.
She was smart enough not to press charges. To this day, you can forget about trying to get the story out of her. She has dropped out of university and now waits on tables.
The bawdy, drinking, dickspotting, gladhanding premier - dontcha miss him ?
Just received these revelatory accounts of crossing paths with former PQ leader Bernard Landry from excellent Lower Westmount raconteur Patrick Gelinas.---
Back in '96, I moved back to Montreal from Toronto to take a job with a financial services company. At that time, Bernard Landry was ministre de finance and
so we were blessed with his presence at a conference of financial planners at the Chateau Champlain. In fact, Bernie was the keynote speaker.
Imagine my happy surprise to find that he was seated at the table adjacent to mine. As a long-time stargazer, I grabbed a seat that offered a clear view of the minister in charge of dough so that I could observe his behaviour up close and personal. I couldn't have picked a better occasion. Ole Bernie was in fine form that evening.
As the preliminaries dragged on (and on and on), Bernie kept dipping into the wine and, not wanting to seem cheap to the uber-fonctionaire, the waiters kept
his glass full. And, not wanting to disappoint the waiters, Bernie kept emptying his glass.
By the time the plates were being cleared to make roome for dessert and coffee, Bernie was nodding off at his seat. Finally, Bernie was introduced and the
seps in the audience rose to their feet while the rest of us remained seated.
I listened intently as BL began his address. To my surprise, he didn't begin discussing his government's accomplishments, plans for the future, etc. Instead,
he gave a slurring recap of the "last three great wars" where the English and French faced off against each other.
Maybe he was on about the October Crisis and the Rebellion of 1837. When I was pointing percy at the porcelain after the speech, I was washing my hands when a fellow financialist arrived at the sink next to me.
"Interesting speech, eh?" I said. "Any idea what wars he was referring to?"
"Aucun idee," he replied, shaking his head. "Aucun idee."
Speaking of Landry and toilets. I was driving back from Quebec City via the 20 a few years back and happened to bump into Landry again.
As I drove down the 20 at the requisite speed of 130 kph, I saw a black Buick approach from behind at about 150kph.
"The car looks like a ministerial limo," I thought to myself as the driver pulled into the fast lane and shot past me.
I had to shake the water off the lily and so I stopped in at the rest station near 3 Rivers. As I pulled in, I saw the same Buick coming to a stop in front of the
maroon shack that houses the facilities. Coming to a stop, I saw Landry emerge from the car and immediately begin to shake hands with the other folks who were
coming and going. At that time, he was leader of the PQ and he was greeted like a rockstar. Personally, I wouldn't have been shaking hands with anyone outside a
toilet but that's the price you pay when you're a politician, I guess.
A group quickly formed around Landry and I had to squeeze by to get into the can. Positioning myself at on of the 2 urinals, I began to take care of business
when the great man arrived at the loo next to me. As I drained the snake, my peripheral vision picked up on the fact that Landry was openly giving me a
dick-check. I held my position, not to mention my unmentionables, finished up and got out of there as quickly as possible. I didn't want to have to deal
with a pass from this hobbit-like creature and beat hasty retreat back to Montreal.
Friday, January 12, 2007
Update on where the ol' fashioned meters are at
I'd Rather be a prostitute - Sabrina Fisicaro's story
Longtime local escort, porn producer, porn star and author Sabrina Fisicaro, 36, wants you to get to know her better.
She has written an autobiography, La Femme au cent prenoms (IQ Groupie 2004) and is now working on more detailed English-language life story that she hopes to complete this year.
She’s also appeared in over 100 hours of footage for an upcoming documentary about her life called I’d Rather be a Prostitute, directed by Mia Donovan.
Since 17 the St. Leonard native has changed personas almost as often as her fishnets. She became Nina for two years in such places as Peurto Rico, then Angel in Pennsylvania, then she became Toni in Ontario for four and then Alex back here in Quebec. For a while she had a muscular short-haired Brigitte Neilsen look finally became Lexei Bacci, a pornalicious video vixen.
One reason she has nothing to hide is that says she declared every cent of her income and paid all her taxes throughout.
Sabrina now shuns the flash that once captivated her.
“I dematerialized about two years ago. Before that, I had to have a new car every six months and it had to be a convertible. I enjoyed comfort but also realized that it attracted a lot of unwanted attention and for me it just was not worth it. I got rid of most of my material possessions and now live the simplest life possible and will probably do that for the rest of my life.”
Sabrina has long shunned intimacy, not only has she never been married or had kids, but she’s never been keen on boyfriends, another thing she’s thinking of changing. “Last time I had someone that I could say that was significant in my life was in December 1994 and that’s why I ended it – for many years there was a self-sabotage. I never thought I’d commit myself. When I’m committed it’s 100 percent if I’m a prostitute I’m 100 percent that. I thought if a guy would not mind what I did, I wouldn’t want him as my boyfriend or husband. I have to admit that I’ve been maybe more open to a relationship but not at any cost I respect myself and I treat men like kings.”
She’s been inspired to write her new book and participate in a movie because those who read the first one left with a lot of questions. “People read it and wanted to know more, 'Why did you choose this?' 'How did you live it?' and 'How did you become the person that you are today?'. All of this wasn’t explored, so I’m in the process of writing a second book, that will cover more extensively why I got into it, it’ll cover my childhood, where I come from and it’ll definitely be much deeper like what exactly happened to me."
“There was sexual physical and emotional abuse, beatings on a daily basis on me and my brother. It’s not something I mentioned in my first book. I had never let any one into this personal stuff, not even a psychiatrist knows what I’m saying it’s the first time I admit this.”
“I’ve protected many people that aren’t worth protecting and now I’m not doing that. I won't necessarily name names but they’ll be easily found."
She says it’s all about enlightening and instructing, not recrimination. “Without those challenges I wouldn’t be the human being I am today. I guess we all choose our path.”
She’s a bookworm and digs films, her latest favourite being New York Doll. “It’s about the bassist of the New York Dolls and his journey to becoming a Mormon, after three of the original members died. It shows the human side of a person. Until then you only saw the image.”
Sabrina warns others against the unseen land mines on the path to fast skin trade cash. “I’m basically the mother who says 'don’t get abused, don’t get manipulated. This is what not to do.' I’m all safe sex. I don’t take chances on anything and the way I’ve run my business, whether I was producing porn or escorting, it was without drugs or alcohol. I feel sad for those who have to use drugs and alcohol, not only in the sex industry but in any job.”
Sabrina trades no sex these days. "I did all that in the first part of my life. Now I just want to transmit. Maybe people can save themselves a lot of trouble and heartache if they can learn from my story.”
Plastified zombie freaks to invade May 10
Gunther Von Hagen's Body Worlds 2 is on its way to town May 10 to September 16 at the Montreal Science Center, King Edward Pier, Quays corner St. Lawrence and Common.Von Hagen first plastified the human body in 1977 and has been putting it on controversial display for several years. This display showcases 200 body specimens, including 20 entire plastified bodies.
Vancouver is already hosting the next version of this series.
Von Hagen's dad was an SS Nazi, Gunther grew up & tried to escape East Germany and got out in 1970. He has since left Germany permanently due to legal hassles.
Jennifer Kruidbos and textual harassment
Montreal's megatalented Jennifer Kruidbos, 24, is a tornado of activity. She writes, manages bands, works at a magazine and organizes charities. Her latest story is a rather mindbending tale of the possible dangers of text messaging.
Jenny K, pictured here helping out in Africa last year, participates and organizes philanthropic endeavours the excellent Watercan, which brings fresh water facilities to H20-challenged zones. She has organized and hosted successful fundraisers for this worthy cause, please support it.
Her mother Sally Kruidbos, aka Sally Williams, is a Brit from a good family who became friendly with the guys from Led Zeppelin during their glory years because her then-boyfriend was the personal assistant to John Bonham. Sally worked at the hospital doing research during the day and frolicked with the rock stars after work. Robert Plant crashed at Sally's flat once because there had been problems with Zep's hotel, and due to stress Bonham got homesick (a regular occurrence, he was a family man) and demanded to go back to Birmingham right away. Plant didn't want to go, so the only solution was to go knocking on Sally's door at midnight to ask if he could sleep on her couch. They talked about farmers in Wales late into night, ''When they were away from the limelight they were normal but when they were together they became complete idiots."
Sally married Leo Kruidbos, a top psychologist for Portage a clinic for drug addicts. Leo came from a broken home with an abusive father who left when Leo was 14.
He then went from foster home to foster home, and fell into drugs heavily including one that starts with h. After checking himself into and completing the 12 month Portage program Leo became a staffer and rose to the top of staff and was praised by the government who also erased all records of his criminal misdeeds. One day a patient named Claude Dubois heard Leo strumming a song called Sally's Song, that Leo had written in tribute to his wife. Dubois liked it so much that he translated it and had a big hit with it, called Femme de Societe, and often invited Leo Kay, as he called himself, on stage to sing it with him in front of huge crowds. Sadly Leo passed away just prior to the turn of the millennium but he got a gold record for Sally's Song.Without any further delay, here's her story about the dangers of text messaging.
Textual Harassment
Texting sweet nothings or fantasies to your lover can be fun, but beware the misdirected message. A few weeks ago, my boyfriend called me in Montreal, from Halifax, asking if there was anything I wanted to tell him. I mentally scanned the prior few days for any misbehaviour that would have earned his uncharacteristic interrogation. With a clear conscience, I informed him that he had nothing to worry about.
"Then why have I spent the last couple hours being questioned by an RCMP detective about you?" he asked -and proceeded to tell about the pissed-off detective who, that afternoon, had called his cell phone and grilled him about me. The questions were strange ones, "Has Jennifer been hanging out with a new crowd?" and "Does Jennifer have access to a voice recorder?"
I listened speechlessly to his bizarre story, interrupting only for the occasional "Wha…?!", while I ran through a sequence of conflicted emotions –panic, confusion, uneasiness and then, found comfort in a final thought: he's fucking with me. But he was not. As he requested, I checked my messages, and there was one from Detective Currie: "I would like a call from Jennifer regarding obscene phone calls originating from this cell phone number. If I don't receive a phone call in the next 24 hours we will initiate investigative action that will result in charges being laid. Thank you. Bye ."
Frowning, then grinning, then giggling, turning red and tearing, I realized what the RCMP may be upset about. My cell phone has a service in which text messages, when sent to land lines, are read aloud by an automated voice. I recalled that the night before, on little sleep, a nasty hangover, hands shaking and body aching, I had texted some dramatic messages to what I thought was my boyfriend's new cell phone. A total of five messages lamented my frustration at the lack of photographs he had taken of me at his company Christmas party. My desire for self portraits stemmed from an augmented sense of attractiveness. I felt dead sexy. A friend of mine had leant me a little black dress. This wasn't any dress. It fit like a glove, showed off my legs and was detailed with 1940s style flapper girl fringes that swayed when I walked. This wonder dress, paired with 4 inch pink Betsy Johnson heels, made me feel like a super star. After a bucket-sized beer, I got up on stage and sang karaoke to "Me and My Bobby McGee" complete with hip shakes and clenched-fist pull downs. I wanted the golden moment captured with nothing less than 6 pristine megapixals.
Everyone, from the lazy bum playing Garage Band to the kindergarten teacher singing " No More Monkeys Jumping on the Bed," fantasizes about being a rock star for a day. I harbour this fantasy more than the average person. When I realized that there were no pictures of the performance, I made sure to express my slight irritation… passionately. My heated messages must have found their way to the RCMP. But how?
Finally, embarrassed and nervous, I called the detective. He told me how the night before, a first year girl, at Acadia University, had called 911, hysterically claiming that someone was harassing her. In between sobs, the girl recounted that 5 minutes earlier, as she was dozing off, her phone rang. Groggy, she had answered, expecting her parents. Instead, a creepy automated man's voice spoke rapidly at her about sexy photographs. Alarmed, she had hung up the phone, only so it could ring again fifteen seconds later. She answered, this time wide awake, convincing herself she had dreamed the first call, but the scary voice spat words at her again. Beginning to panic she hung up, but the robotic voice called back. Trembling, she answered, heard a few disturbing sentences and slammed the receiver down. The voice called back two more times before she, frantically, called the police.
I apologized profusely once Detective Currie had finished speaking. Then I asked him shyly, "Um by any chance did you read these messages?"
"Yes," he responded. "We have all listened to them. Would you like to hear them?" I thought I heard slight snickering in the background.
"Well no…" but a scary robotic voice cut me off.
"I-AM-VERY-DISSAPOINTED" the voice started. I cringed. "THERE-ARE-NO-PICTURES-OF-ME-I-FELT-VERY-SEXY-THERE-ARE-MANY-PICTURES-OF-YOU-BUT-NONE-OF ME-ONE-DAY-I-WILL-BE-4-0-AND-WRINKLED-AND-WILL-WANT-SEXY-PICTURES-TO-REMEMBER-MY-YOUNG –SELF..."
Another four messages played and I clearly heard people whooping with laughter in between each one. When the messages stopped playing (to the entire Nova Scotia RCMP!), I asked Detective Currie if I could explain the context so he didn't think I was some sort of pornography fiend.
"No Jennifer. We figured out what happened by talking to your friend. Watch where you send your text messages," he said, stifling laughter.
I don't know what makes me feel more like a douche bag: that I had inadvertently terrorized a young girl with a pervy Stephen Hawking voice, or that the East Coast RCMP thinks I am a high maintenance crazy broad with aging issues.
My boyfriend has since pointed out that this is what I get for freaking out about "stupid girly shit that doesn't matter". This experience has taught me one thing: that RCMP detectives would make great party guests because they probably have a bank of entertaining stories. To close, a question for you shrewd RAGE readers: I still possess this girl's phone number and would like to call and request her version of the story because it is most definitely hilarious. Is it worth risking another run-in with the law in the name of humour? Send your responses to jenniferk@ ragemontreal.com and make sure to be careful when engaging in textual discourse.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Various contests happenin'
-For women studying science in university there's some big cash here, (pdf) four times five thousand and ten times $2,000, and more.
-If you're between 16 and 20, in a some sort of French immersion school and can write a wicked essay in French, you could win a 10 day trip to France, deadline January 31.
-Government photo contest, deadline October, first prize $500 second $250.
-A trip to Orlando, 2 adults, 2 kids, value $4,000, deadline 9 February, just fill out the form in Le Soleil of use a handwritten facsimilie of the entrance form is okay.
-Best use of aluminum siding March 5 deadline, winner gets a trip to Quebec City.
-The auto show is giving away a new Suzuki car worth $24,000, starts around January 19.
-Come up with a plan to make roads environmentally sustainable and you could win $1,000, $500 or $250. You have to be a student or a profession in that field between 18-13.
-Kids who write a 5,000 word essay about a fictional Quebecois family over a 10 year period can win a trip to France.
-Breast cancer calendar contest - best breast-oriented photo wins a calendar, deadline Jan 15 2007.
-YWCA Women of Merit award, no cash prize, just a medal.
-Get an estimate from Meloche Monnex and win a $63,000 Mercedes R-350, you have until the end of 2007 to apply, so no rush.
-Win a motorscooter, deadline January 31.
How to beat a parking meter in Montreal - old school
I noticed that a local video purportedly showing how to beat the meters has 100,000 views on youtube. I can't follow what she's saying and from what I can tell she's incorrect with her information.Here's a sure way to beat the meters. Unfortunately this works only with the old meters with a twist dials. There are few if any of those left in this town. (Lemme know if you know of any ones left.)
The method is easy. Get a British two pence, they're worth like 5 cents or so. In fact get a big bag of them. The meters mistake them for Canadian one dollar coins. It's theoretically possible that you could get busted feeding two pence coins into the meter. In theory, yes. In practice, no. Using this method, that which cost you a dollar only cost you 5 cents. It's 95 percent off day every day.
As for how to outsmart the newfangled computerized deals that now cost $6 for two hours, well I'm not sure yet but I'll be sure to let you know as soon as I find out. I sometimes ask the person coming out for their paper so I can at least have their minutes and remember the time that's left. They usually hand them over cheerfully. I'm thinking that popping a big magnet on these meters might do the trick, as computers often don't much like magnets.
And as for street parking, get a toolbox and a ladder and remove any offensive signage, it takes the city months to replace it.
Just to add my disclaimer that I do not practice, or condone these actions but I thought it was important for the general edification of the readers of this site.
Montrealers are getting ripped off big time for parking. Unless parking is viable in the downtown core, people will simply do their shopping at the malls and the city will just sprawl outwords, so it's important to allow cars into the city.
The history of dolphins in Montreal
So why does Montreal have no big aquarium where people can swim with dolphins, as they do in other cities?
Here's a splishy-splashy deconstruction of the watery history of such local establishments.
The Montreal Aquarium, also known as the Alcan Aquarium was built on St. Helen's Island for Expo 67, it was run by New Yorker Joseph Geraci.
After Expo, Drapeau didn't much care about the city aquarium. Much of top brass quit in 1975 as and the city didn't replace them. It hit the skids.
On 12 Febuary 1980 the blue collar workers went on strike. The six people who took care of the dolphins refused to feed the lovable rascals. On May 21, 1980 Brigitte, 20, died of starvation and dehydration. She was three months pregnant. A few hours earlier Fanny, another star dolphin attraction died in a similar fashion as did Judith.
Aquarium management had tried on four occasions, 17 January, 7, 14 February and 4 March to demand the City of Montreal intervene and save the dolphins. The help came too late.
Geraci told La Presse at the time, "The animals were in their natural habitat. When we bring them into captivity the least we can do is to take care of them. It's a shame to let them die of hunger. I've never seen people who take care of animals going on strike and allowing them to die of hunger at their cost. What they need is affection and devotion."
The three surviving dolphins, Pierrot, Kim and Carole were brought in flying hammocks to the Flipper Sea School in Miami. There was no more talk of dolphins in Montreal for a long time.
The Montreal Aquarium was doomed in 1988 when the gov't hired François Doumenge from Paris, Theodore Reed from Washington, Greg Tarry from Calgary and Lorne Rendor from Toronto to analyze some of our facilities.
Their report slammed our beloved aquarium. It criticized the location on St. Helen Island and complained that there wasn't enough educational angle or research being done there.
On 30 September 1988 the federal government vowed to give $100 million to move the aquarium to a new facility at the Old Port.The plan included the building of a science museum and a marine museum and a the transfer of the train museum from St. Constant, as well as the aquarium. A new marina, a 120 hotel room hotel and 1,200 apartment or condo units would also be built. They wanted $250 mil from the private sector, $130 from the feds for this $480 mil project. They were anxious to get it done before 1992, the 350 th birthday of Montreal. It never happened, 1987 were bubbly times of optimism but by 1992 the city was mired in a major recession.
In August 1989 authorities announced that the Velodrome would become a zoo, with an aquarium, known as the Biodome. They were planning to pop big mammals in there, such as three beluga whales. But in July 1990 an international symposium in Geneva denounced the usage of such prisons for whales and dolphins.
So then on 15 September 91 the Montreal aquarium closed. Most of the fish were brought to the Biodome, but officials killed four sharks, one by banging it on the head with a sledgehammer.
Others have since wanted to build another aquarium. In June 2000, Canadian billionaire Jim Pattison, of the Ripley's Aquarium again announced that it would build a 100,000 square foot aquarium with $90 mil of its own money in the Old Port. They denied that it would undermine the Biodome because, as one of their officials cattily put it, unlike the Biodome, they'd have tens of thousands of fish.
Then in January 2001, the Granby Zoo promised a $50 million aquarium in Montreal either near the Biodome, St. Helen's Island or the Old Port. Granby Zoo's boss, Bernard Ricard claimed that three American companies were seeking to build an aquarium in Montreal, "why let the Americans do it?" he asked reporters. He then shifted his intentions of building the Delphinarium to Granby. Of course this never got built.
The usual animal rights/welfare types jumped in to denounce the cruelty of keeping such fish well-fed in safe waters. In July 2001 SPCA's Pierre Barnoti denounced the idea of swimming with dolphins as cruel. (One could argue that it's cruel to deny people the chance to swim with dolphins as well, but who cares about people these days?) He also suggested that it would be unhygienic to allow people to swim in waters that dolphins had pooping and peed in. (Dolphin diapers anyone?) Zoocheck Canada, whatever that is, said something similar and they continue to denounce the other places where dolphins swim in captivity in Canada, like Marineland and the Vancouver Aquarium. Some argue that swimming with dolphins is a good therapy for such people as autistic children. But Dr. Pierre Beland denounced the project to La Presse, "why not have programs to have children walk with giraffes or sleep with gorillas? It's too dangerous." Not sure what his point it, but it's pretty funny stuff.
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
Miss Chinese Montreal troubles
Vicki Ng-Wan, 18, of Laval withstood incredible pressure but she resisted and stood up for what's right. She hasn't been so high profile lately but she'll be on your cube soon as one of the 26 hostesses on the local French version of Deal or No Deal, starting later this month, called Le Banquier. It's taping right about now.
The Vanier College Modern Languages student speaks English, French, Russian, Spanish and is learning Italian - but her tongue can't manage Chinese, not yet anyway. Her mother is French Canadian and her ethnic-Chinese father is from Mauritius. "He likes Chinese food," she quips.
Vicki has been sporting her Miss Chinese Montreal 2006 tiara proudly but not with the greatest of ease since earning it in November 2005 at Ruth Koo Lam's annual show, which costs something like $200 to attend.
As is custom, Vicki, as the winner, was shipped off to Hong Kong to participate in a high-profile pageant last January. Montrealers who went on to acting fame in China include '92 winner Christy Chung (who went on to win the HK contest) and 1995 beauty local champ Angela Tong.
Some speculation had Vicki considered a favourite to win against 16 Chinese diaspora pageant victors from places like Toronto, New York and Vancouver.
A day after arriving in Hong Kong, organizers presented Vicki with a contract with TV broadcaster TVB. She was shocked. "It said I couldn't come back to Montreal at any time. There was no guaranteed money. It didn't say whether I was going to get a place to live or not. They wanted me to stay in Hong Kong for the rest of my life. I was underage and told them I'd have to discuss it with my parents."
The other contestants, who were all over 18, signed the paper.
Then the unpleasant armtwisting commenced.
A pageant official rang up Vicki's parents to loudly persuade them to sign the contract. "It was like 2 am, she yelled at them, telling them to sign the contract. The organizer said it was not a dangerous contract but my parents worried. Yelling at my parents, that was not right. My mother asked one of my uncles and he said that if I signed it then nobody could do anything to take me out of there."
"The contracts were inhumane. They made no sense."
Vicki stayed two weeks in Hong Kong but left a week before the tournament. She has no regrets.
"I was 17. It was a good experience, I learned a lot. I had a lot of chances there. The press loved me a lot there. I was approached by all the newspapers to speak to them."
"If I had signed, I don’t know what they would have done. They said we have to stay loyal to them for years and the contract could be renewed whenever they want and I had nothing to say about it. It was really ridiculous and most of the girls didn’t read the contract because most of us trusted a lot the girls bringing us there."
Nowadays Vicki is doing some modelling. "But I do it on the side. My studies come first."
Olympic Stadium's grumpy tour guide
I recently visited the Olympic Stadium and got Kevin "Don't Take My Picture" as a guide (that's him doing the perp-walk-head-turn pose) When I arrived he was planted idly at a counter, elbows firmly on his Journal de Montreal. He bellowed at me like a drill sergeant "puis je vous aider!?" He didn't seem thrilled when I didn't dash to him. It went downhill from there. Maybe it was just a bad day for ol' Kev, but during my visit his smile was firmly upside down. He explained that the bad roof has prevented the Olympic Stadium from hosting events during the winter months. They've got a lawsuit against a Miluwakee company to fix it but until it's redone it's empty all winter. He didn't seem happy about this either. Then he explained how there will never ever be baseball there again, which seemed a little speculative. He pointed me to the tower, where I was unaccompanied, I'll post more details about that later.
Police mismanagment at Girouard and Upper Lachine
Girouard and Upper Lachine is a super dangerous corner where many children cross in the morning, as there's a preschool one block away.
My own small kids were almost run over twice at this corner by crazy motorists even though I was standing right next to them.
Two winters ago two people were run over just a few feet west of here in separate incidents.
There's an old age home nearby, two adult schools and a preschool opening up, so it's a real busy mix of vulnerable and distracted people and speeding cars.
Amazingly the City of Montreal police department station 11 decided to remove the crossing guard that had always been at this corner. The result has been very scary.
Someone went to the borough council meeting to question this decision but NDG/CDN Mayor Applebaum refused to answer, claiming that it was a police matter, even though the police regularly attend these meetings and answer questions.
Police officer Ginette St-Amand told me that they counted the number of children crossing at that corner and it didn't meet the minimum requirements. But they don't count the small pre-schoolers, because they're accompanied by parents. If you have a kid you'll realize that small kids are still vulnerable to speeding cars at busy intersections even when they're with their parents.
There's a fixed number of crossing guards so when a new one is required, another one has to get canceled. This one was transferred to Somerled and Westhill.
There seems to be a big conspiracy at this corner, which has been slated to be transformed into a giant traffic circle, which even Mayor Applebaum admitted could further imperil pedestrians in the area.
Monday, January 08, 2007
Argo books a book bonanza
Current Argo co-owner John places a book in the window at Argo Bookshop just before closing this evening.
It was one year ago tomorrow, January 9, that John L. George (1923-2006) learned that he had a terminal illness. That was the day he left the helm of Argo Bookshop (1915 St. Catherine West; 514 931-3442) -- the literary emporium he founded four decades before -- never to return. But right up until the end, Mr. George still had a hand in its day-to-day operations. He died March 14, 2006.
Mr. George left the shop to his two faithful assistants, John McPhail and Jim Wyse. The shop's doing just fine these days, although John will tell you he doesn't really know if their heads are above water or not. But such is the challenge of being an independent bookshop.
Chat with FLQ terrorist Raymond Villeneuve
I've occasionally dialed up founding FLQ member, the former terrorist Raymond Villeneuve. Here's one of the chats that I had with him in 2002.
Did you ever kill anybody? I went before a judge in court. I denied killing anybody.
What was your role in the early FLQ? I was one of the founders with Schneider, Denis Lamoreux, he joined the Journal de Montreal but has retired. There was a little group, Hudon, George Schoeters, who I think is dead now. He disappeared, he was in Switzerland, nobody could find him.
Did you know Richard Bros? (Bros was a French-born, bisexual, terrorist, heroin smuggler, male model, who moved to London where he died mysteriously in a jail cell in 1970.) No, I didn’t know him. I just read about him in books, that he killed himself in prison.
And Hudon? In 2000 Hudon was busted for selling crack cocaine. Andre Arthur, the federalist, he said the drugs were financing the MNLQ (Villeneuve's group). Of course they weren't. Hudon made the bombs. His brother was an electrician. Hudon asked him to help make the bombs. One person died from their bombs, a guy named O’Neill. Back then I asked two comrades to plant a bomb to blow up the MacDonald statue. They said there were too many cops, so they went to a military garrison not far from there. The bomb didn’t detonate at the right time. That was first death. Then there was Walter Leja, another army guy who took bombs apartment in Westmount, there was a third who was injured. But it’s true Schneider led that operation, I didn’t participate in that.
How do you feel about these deaths? It’s part of war, at the time we didn’t wish the death of anybody. The bomb was next to the garrison, it was to make some noise or damage the wall. We didn’t know that it would kill someone. We didn’t aim to kill people but that happens.
What do you think about McLoughlin’s Last Stop Paris? (which posits that much of the FLQ misdeeds were committed by RCMP undercover operatives).
He’s a mythomaniac, a mental case. He’s going on about the Jacques Geoffroy group. Geoffroy was a nobody. It makes no sense, at the time, the targets were the federal, government Canadian, the post office, they were federal organizations,
So what was the point of it? There was a leftist tendency, with Vallieres, the socialist thing, the revolutoin had one objective is to attack capitalism. The Stock Market was a target, as were the homes of millionaires
McLaughlin claims that the murder of FLQ leader Mario Bachand was an inside job possibly committed by Michele Duclos. I didn’t know her, but I heard about her. There were two women one was a psychologist and the other I don’t remember. They had relations with Black Panthers. I wasn't in Canada at the time of that murder.
Was there infighting? There was a certain fraternity or identification we shared for battle when we fought for the independence of our country. I was inspired by Algeria, they fought for their independence, and Cuba too, and the Basques. In the US there were Black Panthers who defended their minority rights and we sympathized.
What about Jean-Jacques Lanciault? (the informant whose reports to the RCMP led to 23 FLQ arrests in June 1963). He was older than us. I was like19 and he was like 23. He wasn't an intellectual like Schneider and Lamoureux. I think the cops had him by the balls. I didn’t get along with him at the start, didn’t see him again, he was a delinquent had done prison. I was the recruiter. I recruited almost everybody. We recruited him. He passed by Schoeters who was at the Universite of Montreal, he was a leftist revolutionary communist. In my analysis they sent Lanciault to contact Schoeters and they organized a meeting with me and Gabriel Hudon and Lanctot. Lanciault never did anything except that. When I wasn't there Denis Lamoureux had a meeting with many comrades, including Schneider and they did a list of the members. I had the list in my head. They made a list of 35 people and Lanciault gave it to the cops. There was a reward of $60,000 at the time, that would be like $600,000 now. We tried to find him to take care of him but he's hiding like a bum.And Schoeters? He was sentenced to 10 years, the media assumed he was the leader because a Quebecer couldn’t be a leader. He was 33 at the time. He didn’t participate. He led no actions. I organized the operations. Schoeters was in Cuba and met Gueverra. Schoeters went to for about three years. Maybe they said to him, we give him that sentence if he promises to leave. Maybe he's dead now. People have tried to find him. He was in the Belgian resistance at 14 years old. He was considered experienced, an authority, so he organized the group. At the U of M, he wa a professor or a student, maybe doing a doctorate, I don't remember.
And Stanley Grey? I didn't know him, but I know they won't be making a monument to him in Cote-St-Luc. He was friends with Mario Bachand.
Vallieres, Bourgault, Charron, Bros, there seems to have been a lot of gays in the separatist movement. Often I didn't know who was and I didn't want to know. I m a homophobic, it's true. I find it an insult to say somebody is gay. That's an Americanization.
What kind of family background did you have? I had a responsible father. My parents are still alive, together 60 years, for nowadays that's a lot.
Any kids yourself? I said if I become a revolutionary, a patriot, I couldn’t because I couldn't have kids because they'd say that I didn't takecare of my kids. I have one twin brother, not identical and a brother, Sylvain, who I call my little brother, he's six foot four. And a little sister. My parents weren’t independentiste my father didn’t want to have anything to do with it. I think he votes for the PQ. My twin doesn’t. He's a baker. He makes cakes.
You knew Jean Castonguay. He was in France and he returned and he was with a girlfriend. He killed himself, burned himself on the mountain. He was disappointed, sick of it. When he was young he had a girlfriend his father wanted him to marry. His father was rich, but he didn’t want to. Eventually he took five liters of gas, with lots of wood, during the night. I don't know if he was drunk. There was nobody there. They say it was because of his teeth, he had problems with them. There wsa a note, he wrote letters to the newspapers. He was an intelligent man, a painter. He was 53, he didn’t seem depressed. It was a decision he made a long time before, I understand. I thought I'd see him again. He didn't live far from me. We'd meet in cafes. I met him in jail in 1964. Hubert Aquin also killed himself. He was our Andre Malraux, a great Quebecois writer. He wanted to be in the FLQ.
Your party, the MNLQ, is it a regular party with regular meetings? We hold meetings among ourselves. We don’t have public meetings. It's a difficult situation now (2002). The polls aren't good for the PQ. People are thinking of other things. They're not always up for a battle. But we have to keep fighting. The police still bug our phones. We held protests on July 1 in Quebec and the police filmed us overtly and sent others who disguised themselves as tourists or journalists.
What about Second Cup bomber Rheal Mathieu? He was a member of MNLQ but we had a fight. He had all sorts of projects. I found them too ambitious. One time it was the Indians in the Gaspe. They were protesting, blocking roads and he wanted to protest there. We didn’t even know the terrain, so I wasn’t on board for that. Another time when we protested before the Alliance Quebec meeting where Bill Johnson was elected he wanted to go early in the morning to stop people from entering. The press conference was at 12 and he wanted to do it at 8:30 and I said it's too early and too difficult to block the entrance. It made no sense. He left and started the BAF. He had contacts. I didn't know of any members who went with him. I would not accept him back and I would not support the BAF. Had I know it was him I would not have congratulated him.
Are you in touch with Paul Rose? I don’t talk to him much, we don’t have the occasion. He has his own political activities.
And what about Vallieres? He took an anti-sovereignty position. He became a religious again, he was communist for a while in the sixties. Things are calmer now. It goes up and down but it's calm now. Maybe we didn’t take the right path to independence, maybe there was another way to do.
La Patrie, the dead newspaper that lives on...
It's at the southwest corner of St. Catherine and City Hall streets. You'll likely never hold a physical copy of La Patrie, a daily founded by Honoré Beaugrand on February 24, 1879, which became a weekly in 1957 and folded in 1978.
But you can read every single copy HERE.
Click on the photo and you'll see that the newspaper's name has survived in its way, embedded in the building's facade.
Superlibrary take note!
Unclaimed bundles of cash could be yours
20 years ago this week local Polish piano pioneer Frederic Bertozisky last touched his money at the Bank of Montreal at 6700 St. Hubert. The money has piled up to $1,541.00. A few months later he touched another account for the last time. That one is still sitting there, with $745 to its credit. Where's Bertozisky? If you see him, tell him it's there waiting for him.
The Bank of Canada has tons of unclaimed money, belonging to Montrealers and other Canadians that they can't track down, some dating back to as early as 1951 (belonging to KAS SO KITCH E MON E TOO SO NE AH LIMITED - no wonder they can't find 'em). And here's $4,172 if your name is Campbell, it's all the way from 1924
According to the site, 88 percent of the unclaimed accounts are worth less than $1,000 but some are worth more, including some unclaimed inheritances like this one for R. Fleury up in Dolbeau, it's worth $5,800. By law if you accept part of an inheritance you get the whole thing, including the debts, so it's sometimes a bad idea to cash in. If it's under $500 after a few years they just gobble it up for themselves.
Some like New Yorker Colin MacDonald's $1,121 belong to people from out of town.
Colin James Campbell forgot his $979 in the Old Montreal BMo. Campbell is listed in 1987 living as Lowinhills Pongakana, Valley Road 6 Te Puke, Bay of Plenty, New Zealand.
Others like BC's Lesley Birtles are easy to find, but seeing as there's only $382, it's hard to bother caring.
Some are names you might've heard such as Tom Velk, who has $15 in an account for something called Mtl Geographic from 1990.
I spoke to someone whose hobby is to trys to contact these people. She asks for a 10% donation when she tracks 'em down. That ain't much. She says people like Mike Ignatieff and Joe Clark have been found on the list in the past.
One of the biggest unclaimed cash hauls I came across is for the ASS HAHNEMANNIENNE DES PROFESSIONNELS DE LA SANTE HOM, which has $4,910, last touched 12 years ago at the National Bank on Laurier. Hahneman invented homeopathy, so this is likely some sort of new age medical thingy. 5160 HUTCHISON APP 200 is the address listed but in fact no such address exists.
Others seem awfully short on information like the $1,516.00 belonging to Jan par Francine from the Region Mun de Police de St. Nicolas for 14 years ago in Ville St. Laurent.
Another good one is the ASS DIRECTEURS FUNERAILLES MTL of 17 E Ave. Laurier, Montreal, there's a $2,364.41 there for someone from the National Bank at 801 St. Catherine East, last touched in 1990.
Check out the site and if you see anything hot, let me know.
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Birds find a groovy perch on Angrinon
If you ever want to shoot a cheapo remake of that craptastic 'Fred Hitchcolk philm, The Birds, roll your coffin over to Angrignon on the overpass of highway 20 and you'll find no shortage of your fine feathered friends blocking out the warm winter sky. You might assume that said byrdies elect to perch here because of its excellent proximity to a water supply on the Lachine Canal, but in fact there's a similar sign even closer to the water which they shun. This is simply the fashionable place for Montreal birds. This spot, to Montreal birds, is the DiSalvio's or the 1234 or the Ole Munich or whatever the place to see-and-be-seen is lately.
Saturday, January 06, 2007
2007..the year Tai Chi became tres chic
Anthony Pantazopoulos has forgotten more 'bout Tai Chi than you'll ever know. Well, no I don't mean that he forgets a lot of stuff. I don't know if he forgets a lot or whatever.
What I'm trying to say is that he knows a ton about Tai Chi and he's got a great place down on Wellington in Verdun where he teaches it. He's a character, a real smooth guy who looks you right in the eye and listens to your every word no matter how dull and returns with a quick quip. He coulda made a huge career in any field but chose to devote himself to Tai Chi and a variety of Asian massage techniques. He's also an excellent writer and adventurer.
He runs this joint with his gorgeous Portuguese girlfriend whose photo I unfortunately didn't get. I've hung out there and sampled pretty much of everything they do and highly recommend a visit. His Chi Kung courses start Wednesday 10 January and his Tai Chi courses on Thursday
11 January both take place in a spacious place at 5101 Wellington, where he's also known to throw the occasional rockin' party. Drop a quarter into the phone booth and dial 514-961-0768 to bend his ear and in return he'll bend your mind.
SPCA critters for sale
Lots of nice critters for sale at the SPCA, at Jean Talon and Mountain Sights. Dogs go for $180 and that includes a bunch of shots and a computer chip embedded in them to find them if they get lost. Cats are $124 with a couple of extras as well. Not to guilt you out, but it's a matter of life and death, if you don't hop on by these cuteys will be sent to animal heaven. There's a charming staff of mostly young female volunteers ready to help you to select the beast that best fits your needs.
Pretty good men's clothing warehouse sale
That dynamic duo is tall Louis (pronounce Lew-ey) and Hansome Evan who run a giant warehouse sale of men's clothes at Jean Talon and Mountain Sights just next to the Namur metro. They have some excellent looking men's threads, a beautiful wool designer suit can go for $200, Hilfiger shirts - which last like 15 years - go for $25, worth peeking in. The sale is only on for a couple more weeks. They're open today and Sunday 11-5 but I believe they're closed Monday. 
Cemetery video
Friday, January 05, 2007
Famous shacks in Westmount
And this second photo illustrates the joint where Montreal's all-time greatest historian William Atherton lived, 471 Argyle in Westmount. The originals of his historical volumes are priceless but it's said that certain libraries leave them casually lying around.
Consulting Robert Bourassa about Park Avenue
This whole Park Avenue renaming thing doesn't seem to be cooling off at all, so I thought of doing what nobody else has done.
I went up to the former Premier's grave and asked him, quite politely and in French, what he thought should be done.
And you know what he said?
Nothing.
He didn't say "nothing,"as in nothing should be done, he was just all silent, not even a little tingle of an answer.
So feel free to interpret that silence in any way you consider appropriate.
I had first seen this grave about five years ago and was quite impressed but now upon second blush it's a lot less interesting than I had remembered it to be.
Here's to more like that
10 degrees and sunny in January, positively smokin' hot outside the Vendome metro.
I just can't get enough.
Upper Westmount protest by flag
So sad to see the wealthy millionaires get exploited as this poor little rich guy is at the top of the hill on one of those windy streets north of The Boulevard.Three of his four flags are of the non-combative type but this one appears to be less-than-quiescent towards a situation that isn't entirely explained.
I guess he's ticked off at the City of Westmount over a permit issue, otherwise he surely wouldn't be favouring the City of Montreal flag.
Nobody seemed to be around so I didn't to knock on his door and fake sympathy for his plight.
Thursday, January 04, 2007
Pucks on the Rocket's tomb to bring the team luck
There a little-known tradition in town in which Montreal Candiens hockey fans place hockey pucks on the shrine of Maurice "Rocket" Richard as a way to wish the team success.I was paying my respects at Richard's grave Thursday afternoon when a smaller, older gentleman with a scruffy beard, beret and expensive looking trenchcoat laid down one of these pucks.
He looked a little disappointed.
"There's usually more pucks here," he said, in French, commonfolk accent.
"Maybe that's why the Canadiens haven't been winning so much lately," I replied.
"Yes, that's right," he said, nodding, looking off into the distance. He left quickly. I didn't get to quiz him.
So if you want the Habs to win, consider making an offering to the God of Montreal hockey up at the Notre-Dame-des-Neiges cemetery (map) on Cote-des-Neiges.
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
Broken board theory at Bridge and Wellington
Whenever one of the boards falls out of this long-abandoned heritage building at Bridge and Wellington, a friend scornfully points out that the owners are secretly hoping that someone goes in there and burns it down.Some urban affairs scholar once thought up the broken window theory. It says that something as small as a broken window can screw up an entire neighbourhood because it sends the message of decay that all other events will follow. I'm going to come up with the broken board theory sometime this year, which is the same but involving wood.
For a long time this building was office for the Canadian Pacific Railway. In the 70s it became a freight forwarding company. There's a similar abandoned building a little further down, also heritage protected, in front of the Club Price.
I spoke to Mr. McRae (temporarily forgot his first name, he's the brother of George McRae, who has a wicked website about the Point). McRae's father worked in the building in front of Club Price. "He was the commission livestock agent. Farmers would bring in their cattle and they’d have to use him and others from that building to sell the cattle to Canada Packers, Northern Packers and to other small packing concerns on that street before they'd get slaughtered. Dad would be the middleman a salesman type of thing, he was commissioned by the federal government."
Costco, aka Club Price was a stockyards, so that side of the street never smelled so good. Across the street wasn't so bad, there were always a couple of small restaurants. Pretty much everything on adjacent Mill Street was connected to livestock too. Staffers had a club on the block of Bridge between Wellington and St. Patrick called the Arrawanna Club, of which no printed description appears to exist anywhere. It was there for something like 50 years, if not more.
Countless homes in the nearby Goose Village were demolished in 1964 by Jean Drapeau, in a slum clearing initiative. Drapeau demolished it a)-because it was the stronghold of his nemesis, opposition councillor Frank Hanley b)-because a report suggested that it was unsanitary and smelled bad c)-he didn't want people driving in to Expo 67 to see an ugly poor area as the first they saw driving in on the Victoria Bridge (similarly Pierre Bourque has some buildings demolished at the Montreal side of the Jac-Cartier bridge a few years ago, to improve the view for those driving into the city).
I haven't researched the ownership of the two buildings but I wouldn't be surprised if the CNR was involved in the ugly calumny.
Not-so haunted House on St. James Street West
Y'know what they say about this 1904 multi-gabled Victorian Mansion at 5590 St. James Street West, corner Oxford? They say it's haunted.Yeah, that's right. Montreal ghosts!
When I say "they" I mean an unnamed local musician who lived there 10 years ago told a journalist about a female ghost living there. (I don't know the musician's name but judging from the phone book it was either Pierre Dugas, Bernard Faubert, Joseph Lapointe, P. Fidolfi or Cam Sakkal). He said the ghost is a woman who died in a fire there many years ago and that at 3 or 4 am you can smell a burning smell and sometimes there's lights flickering through the window at night.
I bumped into an actual resident outside last year, a Tara Reid-type blonde hopping in a taxi. "Is it haunted?" I asked. "Of course not!," she replied scornfully. I don't believe it either. So don't be too scared when you walk by.
Someone save this local landmark
Mammy's Fish and Chips on Church between Verdun and Joseph can be yours for $239 k neg. There's also a 4 1/2 upstairs. Matthew Hilton and his wife Linda Mark bought it a couple of years ago after they moved out of the Maison Egg Roll on Notre Dame (now a big grocery store). The reputation of the joint has gone down. It's usually empty and Hilton and Mark have broken up in one of the city's nastiest divorces, which has involved him assaulting his wife's brother. The real estate agent says it's 
a local landmark that's been there for 55 years, but a quick peek in the old phone books suggests that it was home to the Belle-Mare jewelery store and only around 1992 did it become Mammy's. Click on the picture for a close up. I love the drawing of the fish.If you want to give it a go, keep in mind that the Hao Hao Chinese restaurant with that impressive mansard is just a couple of doors down.
Bonus foto from a coupla doors down on Church: This sliding glass door on the second floor will be the death of someone soon. It leads to nothing but a tiny little shade thing, with no railings.
How paper towels got into ceiling vents
This ceiling vent in the IGA in Alexis Nihon has a major appetite for rolls of paper towels. My theory is that paper towels dance on the ceiling when the store is closed and nobody is watching. The result was this fatal and tragic mishap with the air suckage equipment.
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Interview with Montreal hockey legend Charlie Hodge
It seems a lot of goaltenders die young, thankfully you're still going strong.
I have a theory about that, relating to my own case. When we used to travel it would be by train and we had our own car and a lot of the boys used to smoke cigars. When I had my first and second heart attacks they kept telling me that I was a smoker. I never smoked in my life, so I can only assume that second hand smoke is deadly like they say. I was in Calgary working as a scout, I was about 54, when I had my first one, then I ended up the next year in Jackson, Michigan and had another heart attack. They kept accusing me of being a smoker. They said you might walk out and drop dead or we could send you to Ann Arbour and have surgery. I asked, what’s my chances with bypass surgery? It was like fifty-fifty. I was 56 at the time. I had the bypass and it’s been fine since.
Do you think stress is the big goalie killer – goalies throwing up before games and stuff? I’d have an upset stomach, my stomach used to knot up but Glenn Hall was the only one I heard of that threw up. Mine would tighten up, but that’s it.
What do you do now? I still scout hockey. I am an antique. I scout for Tampa Bay. I went through three teams, Winnipeg. I got fired from there when Fergie lost his job. Then I got hired in Pittsburgh and two years ago they let me go, there was a bit of skulduggery involved in that one but we won’t get into that. They let three of us go at the same time. The other two guys got hired this year, so everybody from Pittsburgh got rehired. But I don’t do any traveling, I just do local around here.
Do you still see your old hockey buddies? Sure, we see each other and we kibbutz . But I don’t get to go back to Montreal. I should go back. I’ve been invited back but I don’t go back. It’s just too much of a problem to go. I’ve done so much traveling in my life.
Where did you grow up in Montreal? On George-V in Lachine. Originally it was 70-A George-V and then they changed the numbers so it became 322 George-V (the homes have all been demolished and it's industrial there now). I was born in that house and lived for 21 years in it.
What sort of family background did you have? My dad was a welder. He worked for Dominion Bridge. I have no brothers or sisters.Do you consider yourself one of the top goalies? I don’t think that, but for someone in my position I figure I achieved possibly more than I had hoped for.I hear you had to work summers as a player. I worked with Goodyear Tire and Rubber in the early days. After that I got a little established I used to do two months of hockey schools, Montreal and Worcester Massachusetts and other different places.
They wouldn’t let you play on the high school team, so you quit school? When I was going to school, I ended up playing for Junior Canadiens with Sammy Pollock and the assistant principal who was my French teacher at the time said to me, "if you don’t play for the school, we’re going to take you to court." When you’re 16 years old, you get a bit concerned. My parents didn’t have any money. We didn’t know about these things. So I quit school. I went out with the Junior Royals in 1949 and at that time Tag Miller was the coach. I went out to practice with them and during the summer, Tag Miller who was only 37, died. So a new coach took over and all he had w